J. S. Mill

Abstract

A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name which stands for an attribute of a thing. A practice has grown up in more modern times, which, if not introduced by Locke, has gained currency from his example, of applying the expression “abstract name” to all names which are the result of abstraction and generalization, and consequently to all general names, instead of confining it to the names of attributes.

The concretes “father” and “son” have, or might have, the abstracts “paternity” and “filiety.”

Abstraction

A wrongful abstraction of wealth from certain members of the community.

Advertence

To this difference it is right that advertence should be had in regulating taxation.

Analogical

When a country which has sent out colonies is termed the mother country, the expression is analogical.

Ascendant

The ascendant community obtained a surplus of wealth.

Balance

English workmen completely lose their balance.

Category

The categories or predicaments -- the former a Greek word, the latter its literal translation in the Latin language -- were intended by Aristotle and his followers as an enumeration of all things capable of being named; an enumeration by the summa genera i.e., the most extensive classes into which things could be distributed.

Colligation

Colligation is not always induction, but induction is always colligation.

Conation

Of conation, in other words, of desire and will.

Concrete

Concrete is opposed to abstract. The names of individuals are concrete, those of classes abstract.

The concretes “father” and “son” have, or might have, the abstracts “paternity” and “filiety”.

Conditional

The words hypothetical and conditional may be . . . used synonymously.

connote

The word “white” denotes all white things, as snow, paper, the foam of the sea, etc., and ipmlies, or as it was termed by the schoolmen, connotes, the attribute “whiteness.”

Depositary

The depositaries of power, who are mere delegates of the people.

Disbelieve

Assertions for which there is abundant positive evidence are often disbelieved, on account of what is called their improbability or impossibility.

Essence

The . . . word essence . . . scarcely underwent a more complete transformation when from being the abstract of the verb “to be,” it came to denote something sufficiently concrete to be inclosed in a glass bottle.

Evidentiary

When a fact is supposed, although incorrectly, to be evidentiary of, or a mark of, some other fact.

Exhaustibility

I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations.

Existence

The existence therefore, of a phenomenon, is but another word for its being perceived, or for the inferred possibility of perceiving it.

Hypothesis

An hypothesis being a mere supposition, there are no other limits to hypotheses than those of the human imagination.

Induction

Induction is the process by which we conclude that what is true of certain individuals of a class, is true of the whole class, or that what is true at certain times will be true in similar circumstances at all times.

Institutional

Institutional writers as Rousseau.

Limitation

They had no right to mistake the limitation . . . of their own faculties, for an inherent limitation of the possible modes of existence in the universe.

Market

There is a third thing to be considered: how a market can be created for produce, or how production can be limited to the capacities of the market.

Oversupply

A general oversupply or excess of all commodities.

Physical

Labor, in the physical world, is . . . employed in putting objects in motion.

Prompt

To cover any probable difference of price which might arise before the expiration of the prompt, which for this article [tea] is three months.

Resuscitate

These projects, however often slain, always resuscitate.

Seigniorage

If government, however, throws the expense of coinage, as is reasonable, upon the holders, by making a charge to cover the expense (which is done by giving back rather less in coin than has been received in bullion, and is called “levying a seigniorage”), the coin will rise to the extent of the seigniorage above the value of the bullion.

Supersession

The general law of diminishing return from land would have undergone, to that extent, a temporary supersession.

Truck

We will begin by supposing the international trade to be in form, what it always is in reality, an actual trucking of one commodity against another.

Verge

Even though we go to the extreme verge of possibility to invent a supposition favorable to it, the theory . . . implies an absurdity.