Mill thought that abstract terms are connotative when, besides denoting a quality, they suggest a quality of that quality (as 'fault' implies 'hurtfulness'); but against this it may be urged that one quality cannot bear another, since every qualification of a quality constitutes a distinct quality in the total ('milk-whiteness' is distinct from 'whiteness,' _cf._ chap.iii.Sec.

4).

After all, if it is the most consistent plan, why not say that abstract, like proper, terms have no connotation?
But if abstract terms must be made to connote something, should it not be those things, indefinitely suggested, to which the qualities belong?
Thus 'whiteness' may be considered to connote either snow or vapour, or any white thing, apart from one or other of which the quality has no existence; whose existence therefore it implies.

By this course the denotation and connotation of abstract and of general names would be exactly reversed.

Whilst the denotation of a general name is limited by the qualities connoted, the connotation of an abstract name includes all the things in which its denotation is realised.