The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, 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 base...


note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)

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John Stuart Mill Quotes

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own;...

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own;...

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own;...

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own;...