That a predication differs from a name in doing more than merely
calling up an idea, is admitted in what I have noted as the second
half of the author's theory of Predication. That second half points
out that every predication is a communication, intended to act, not
on the mere ideas of the listener, but on his persuasion or belief:
and what he is intended to believe, according to the author, is,
that of the two names which are conjoined in the predication, one is
a mark of the same idea (or let me add, of the same sensation or
cluster of sensations) of which the other is a mark. This is a
doctrine of Hobbes, the one which caused him to be termed by
Leibnitz, in words which have been often quoted, "plus quam
nominalis." It is quite true that when we predicate B of A--when we
assert of A that it is a B--B must, if the assertion is true, be a
name of A, _i.e._, a name applicable to A; one of the innumerable
names which, in virtue of their signification, can be used as
descriptive of A: but is this the information which we want to
convey to the hearer? It is so when we are speaking only of names
and their meaning, as when we enunciate a definition. In every other
case, what we want to convey is a matter of fact, of which this
relation between the names is but an incidental consequence. When we
say, John walked out this morning, it is not a correct expression of
the communication we desire to make, that "having walked out this
morning" or "a person who has walked out this morning" are two of
the innumerable names of John. They are only accidentally and
momentarily names of John by reason of a certain event, and the
information we mean to give is, that this event has happened. The
event is not resolvable into an identity of meaning between names,
but into an actual series of sensations that occurred to John, and a
belief that any one who had been present and using his eyes would
have had another series of sensations, which we call seeing John in
the act of walking out. Again, when we say, Negroes are
woolly-haired, we mean to make known to the hearer, not that
woolly-haired is a name of every negro, but that wherever the
cluster of sensations signified by the word negro, are experienced,
the sensations signified by the word woolly-haired will be found
either among them or conjoined with them. This is an order of
sensations: and it is only in consequence of it that the name
woolly-haired comes to be applicable to every individual of whom the
term negro is a name.