name". Only Clichtoveus drops the
verb _connotat_, perhaps as a disputable term, and says simply
_ultra importat_.

So in the Port Royal Logic (1662), from which possibly Mill
took the distinction: "Les noms qui signifient les choses
comme modifiees, marquant premierement et directement la
chose, quoique plus confusement, et indirectement le mode,
quoique plus distinctement, sont appeles _adjectifs_ ou
_connotatifs_; comme rond, dur, juste, prudent" (part i. chap
ii.).

What Mill did was not to invert Scholastic usage but to revive
the distinction, and extend the word connotative to general
names on the ground that they also imported the possession
of attributes. The word has been as fruitful of meticulous
discussion as it was in the Renaissance of Logic, though
the ground has changed. The point of Mill's innovation was,
premising that general names are not absolute but are applied
in virtue of a meaning, to put emphasis on this meaning as
the cardinal consideration. What he called the connotation had
dropped out of sight as not being required in the Syllogistic
Forms. This was as it were the point at which he put in his
horn to toss the prevalent conception of Logic as Syllogistic.

The real drift of Mill's innovation has been obscured by
the fact that it was introduced among the preliminaries
of Syllogism, whereas its real usefulness and significance
belongs not to Syllogism in the strict sense but to
Definition. He added to the confusion by trying to devise
forms of Syllogism based on connotation, and by discussing
the Axiom of the Syllogism from this point of view. For
syllogistic purposes, as we shall see, Aristotle's forms are
perfect, and his conception of the proposition in extension
the only correct conception. Whether the centre of gravity in
Consistency Logic should not be shifted back from Syllogism to
Definition, the latter being the true centre of consistency,
is another question. The tendency of Mill's polemic was to
make this change. And possibly the secret of the support it
has recently received from Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet is
that they, following Hegel, are moving in the same direction.

In effect, Mill's doctrine of Connotation helped to fix
a conception of the general name first dimly suggested by
Aristotle when he recognised tha