 In Bentham’s theory of language general terms have no corresponding reality: words, ideas and propositions must represent or describe “real entities”, which may be either “perceptions” or “substances” (UC lxix, 62–63), otherwise they are “fictitious entities”. This was a distinction Bentham learnt from d’Alembert (1838–43, III, 286), though he turned it to a more radical ontological purpose. He defined a fictitious entity as “a mere nothing” and “no proposition by which any property is ascribed to it can therefore be in itself and of itself a true one, nor therefore an instructive one”. If there is any truth associated with a fictitious entity it “can not belong to it in any other character than that of the intended and supposed equivalent of … some proposition having for its subject some real entity” (1838–43, VIII, 246). The technique of “paraphrasis” was the key instrument Bentham employed to demystify fictitious entities. Some fictitious entities are necessary for human discourse, but their meaning can only be revealed through their connection to real entities (1977, 495n; 2010b, 287–88, 317–18); if a fictitious entity proves impervious to this paraphrastic technique it is shown to be a meaningless abstraction unrelated to demonstrable reality. Concepts such as “obligation” and “ interests”, for example, can be rendered meaningful in terms of the perceptible pains and pleasures experienced and anticipated by specific individuals. Concepts like “community” derive their meaning from the sum of individuals that compose an actual community, and the happiness of a community is nothing but the aggregate happiness of the individuals that constitute the community in question. On the other hand, theological propositions, having no correlation with material reality, deal not with the facts of ordinary experience but with a supposed “reality” that transcends the physical world, and just as the language of opinion ought to have no place in the discourse of physical science, so the untestable and unverifiable propositions of theology have no place in moral science.