Scriptures, and at the same time provide some means of testing the doctrines

propounded by teachers and writers in these days of seducing spirits and

doctrines of demons.

If man be created in the image of God, and if man be placed over the

work of His hands, we should expect that he would possess a nature above that

of the brute creation; in other words, that he would be a rational being.

This we know to be the case; whereas animals act mainly under the power of

instinct, man acts under the influence of reason.  The first recorded act of

man is found in Genesis 2:19:

'And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name

Those who deny the inspiration of Scripture and look upon Genesis as a

collection of myths and legends, have to account for the scientific accuracy

of its most incidental details.  What is it that we find in the forefront of

any textbook on logic?  The necessity of names:

'If we attempt ... analyse ... the import of propositions, we find

forced upon us as a subject of previous consideration, the import of

names' (J.S.M.*).

*

In this study the initials stand for John Stuart Mill, and all

paragraphs in quotation marks without name or initial must be understood as

quotations from this author's book, entitled A system of Logic.

Thus Adam is exhibited in Genesis 2 acting as a rational being, giving

names to all the lower creation that passed before him as a necessary first

step to fuller and clearer understanding.  Hobbes in his Commutation of Logic

'A name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may raise

in our minds a thought like to some thought we had before, and which

being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the

speaker had before in his mind'.

This is the simplest definition of a name.  Names may stand for more

than this; in Scripture for instance, names are often prophetic, but in the

simplest analysis names are marks, and it is of the utmost importance that

when two or more people converse, they should agree that certain marks or

names stand for certain ideas or things, otherwise confusion must follow.

And here the accuracy of the history of Babel is seen.  As soon as certain

groups of men began to call ideas and things by names different from those

employed by other groups, confusion followed, and 'they left off to build'.

When God would mark a crisis in the life of the Patriarch, He changed his

name from Abram to Abraham.

Names must be distinguished the one from the other according to their

significations, of which there are the following classifications:

General and Singular names.

Concrete and Abstract names.

Connotative and Non-Connotative names.

Positive and Negative names.