But where languages have
failed to give correlative names, there the relation is not always
so easily taken notice of. Concubine is, no doubt, a relative name, as
well as a wife: but in languages where this and the like words have
not a correlative term, there people are not so apt to take them to be
so, as wanting that evident mark of relation which is between
correlatives, which seem to explain one another, and not to be able to
exist, but together. Hence it is, that many of those names, which,
duly considered, do include evident relations, have been called
external denominations. But all names that are more than empty
sounds must signify some idea, which is either in the thing to which
the name is applied, and then it is positive, and is looked on as
united to and existing in the thing to which the denomination is
given; or else it arises from the respect the mind finds in it to
something distinct from it, with which it considers it, and then it
includes a relation.
3. Some seemingly absolute terms contain relations. Another sort
of relative terms there is, which are not looked on to be either
relative, or so much as external denominations: which yet, under the
form and appearance of signifying something absolute in the subject,
do conceal a tacit, though less observable, relation. Such are the
seemingly positive terms of old, great, imperfect, &c.
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