Note note 2 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

2 A right understanding of the words which are names of names, is of great importance in philosophy. The tendency was always strong to believe that whatever receives a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own; and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense. The meaning of all general, and especially of all abstract terms, became in this way enveloped in a mystical haze; and none of these have been more generally misunderstood, or have been a more copious source of futile and bewildering speculation, than some of the words which are names of names. Genus, Species, Universal, were long supposed to be designations of sublime hyperphysical realities; number, instead of a general name of all numerals, was supposed to be the name, if not of a concrete thing, at least of a single property or attribute.

This class of names was well understood and correctly characterized by Hobbes, of whose philosophy the distinction between names of names and of things was a cardinal point.—Ed.