Considered in this point of view, the phraseology I have employed, which is that commonly used by philosophers, seems to me to be the best. Mr. Spencer is of opinion that because Socrates and Alcibiades are not the same man, the attribute which constitutes them men should not be called the same attribute; that because the humanity of one man and that of another express themselves to our senses not by the same individual sensations but by sensations exactly alike, humanity ought to be regarded as a different attribute in every different man. But on this showing, the humanity even of any one man should be considered as different attributes now and half an hour hence; for the sensations by which it will then manifest itself to my organs will not be a continuation of my present sensations, but a repetition of them; fresh sensations, not identical with, but only exactly like the present. If every general conception, instead of being “the One in the Many,” were considered to be as many different conceptions as there are things to which it is applicable, there would be no such thing as general language. A name would have no general meaning if man connoted one thing when predicated of John, and another, though closely resembling, thing when predicated of William. Accordingly a recent pamphlet asserts the impossibility of general knowledge on this precise ground.

The meaning of any general name is some outward or inward phenomenon, consisting, in the last resort, of feelings; and these feelings, if their continuity is for an instant broken, are no longer the same feelings, in the sense of individual identity. What, then, is the common something which gives a meaning to the general name? Mr. Spencer can only say, it is the similarity of the feelings; and I rejoin, the attribute is precisely that similarity. The names of attributes are in their ultimate analysis names for the resemblances of our sensations (or other feelings). Every general name, whether abstract or concrete, denotes or connotes one or more of those resemblances. It will not, probably, be denied, that if a hundred sensations are undistinguishably alike, their resemblance ought to be spoken of as one resemblance, and not a hundred resemblances which merely resemble one another. The things compared are many, but the something common to all of them must be conceived as one, just as the name is conceived as one, though corresponding to numerically different sensations of sound each time it is pronounced. The general term man does not connote the sensations derived once from one man, which, once gone, can no more occur again than the same flash of lightning.