{ 300} In using these connotative names, it is often highly convenient to drop the connotation; that is, to leave out the connoted cluster.
{ 301} A mark is needed, to show when it is meant that the connotation is dropped. A slight mark put upon the connotative term answers the purpose; and shews { 302} when it is not meant that anything should be connoted. In regard to the word black, for example, we merely annex to it the syllable _ness_; and it is immediately { 303} indicated that all connotation is dropped: so, in sweetness; hardness; dryness; lightness. The new words, so formed, are the words which have been denominated { 304} ABSTRACT; as the connotative terms from which they are formed have been denominated CONCRETE; and, as these terms are in frequent use, it is necessary that the meaning of them should be well remembered.
It is now also manifest what is the real nature of ABSTRACT terms; a subject which has in general presented such an appearance of mystery. They are simply the CONCRETE terms, with the connotation dropped. And this has in it, surely, no mystery at all.[83]
[Editor's footnote 83: After having said that a concrete general name notes an attribute, that this, one of the sensations in a cluster, and connotes the objects which have the attribute, i.e. the clusters of which that sensation forms a part; the author proceeds to say that an abstract name is the concrete name with the connotation dropped.
This seems a very indirect and circuitous mode of making us understand what an abstract name signifies. Instead of aiming directly at the mark, it goes round it. It tells us that one name signifies a part of what another name signifies, leaving us to infer what part. A connotative name with the connotation dropped, is a phrase requiring to be completed by specifying what is the portion of signification left. The concrete name with its connotation signifies an attribute, and also the objects which have the attribute. We are now instructed to drop the latter half of the signification, the objects. What then remains? The attribute. Why not then say at once that the abstract name is the name of the attribute? Why tell us that _x_ is _a_ plus _b_ with _b_ dropped, when it was as easy to tell us that _x_ is _a_?