Chapter V.

Chapter V.On The Natural History Of The Variations In The Meaning Of Terms.§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth is, that the connotation of such words is perpetually varying; as might be expected from the manner in which words in common use acquire their connotation. A technical term, invented for purposes of art or science, has, from the first, the connotation given to it by its inventor; but a name which is in every one’s mouth before any one thinks of defining it, derives its connotation only from the circumstances which are habitually brought to mind when it is pronounced. Among these circumstances, the properties common to the things denoted by the name, have naturally a principal place; and would have the sole place, if language were regulated by convention rather than by custom and accident. But besides these common properties, which if they exist arecertainlypresent whenever the name is employed, any other circumstance maycasuallybe found along with it, so frequently as to become associated with it in the same manner, and as strongly, as the common properties themselves. In proportion as this association forms itself, people give up using the name in cases in which those casual circumstances do not exist. They prefer using some other name, or the same name with some adjunct, rather than employ an expression which will call up an idea they do not want to excite. The circumstance originally casual, thus becomes regularly a part of the connotation of the word.It is this continual incorporation of circumstances originally accidental, into the permanent signification of words, which is the cause that there are so few exact synonyms. It is this also which renders the dictionary meaning of a word, by universal remark so imperfect an exponent of its real meaning. The dictionary meaning is marked out in a broad, blunt way, and probably includes all that was originally necessary for the correct employment of the term; but in process of time so many collateral associations adhere to words, that whoever should attempt to use them with no other guide than the dictionary, would confound a thousand nice distinctions and subtle shades of meaning which dictionaries take no account of; as we notice in the use of a language in conversation or writing by a foreigner not thoroughly master of it. The history of a word, by showing the causes which determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment than any definition; for definitions can only show its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its history may show the law by which the succession was produced. The wordgentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. From this it came by degrees to connote all such qualities or adventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of that rank. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar acceptations it means any one who lives without labor, in another without manual[pg 481]labor, and in its more elevated signification it has in every age signified the conduct, character, habits, and outward appearance, in whomsoever found, which, according to the ideas of that age, belonged or were expected to belong to persons born and educated in a high social position.It continually happens that of two words, whose dictionary meanings are either the same or very slightly different, one will be the proper word to use in one set of circumstances, another in another, without its being possible to show how the custom of so employing them originally grew up. The accident that one of the words was used and not the other on a particular occasion or in a particular social circle, will be sufficient to produce so strong an association between the word and some specialty of circumstances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any other case, and the specialty becomes part of its signification. The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there.An instance in point is the remarkable change which, in the English language at least, has taken place in the signification of the wordloyalty. That word originally meant in English, as it still means in the language from whence it came, fair, open dealing, and fidelity to engagements; in that sense the quality it expressed was part of the ideal chivalrous or knightly character. By what process, in England, the term became restricted to the single case of fidelity to the throne, I am not sufficiently versed in the history of courtly language to be able to pronounce. The interval between aloyal chevalierand a loyal subject is certainly great. I can only suppose that the word was, at some period, the favorite term at court to express fidelity to the oath of allegiance; until at length those who wished to speak of any other, and as it was probably deemed, inferior sort of fidelity, either did not venture to use so dignified a term, or found it convenient to employ some other in order to avoid being misunderstood.§ 2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, at first casually incorporated into the connotation of a word which originally had no reference to it, in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and becomes not merely a part of the connotation, but the whole of it. This is exemplified in the word pagan,paganus; which originally, as its etymology imports, was equivalent tovillager; the inhabitant of apagus, or village. At a particular era in the extension of Christianity over the Roman empire, the adherents of the old religion, and the villagers or country people, were nearly the same body of individuals, the inhabitants of the towns having been earliest converted; as in our own day, and at all times, the greater activity of social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients of new opinions and modes, while old habits and prejudices linger longest among the country people; not to mention that the towns were more immediately under the direct influence of the Government, which at that time had embraced Christianity. From this casual coincidence, the wordpaganuscarried with it, and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea of a worshiper of the ancient divinities; until at length it suggested that idea so forcibly that people who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided using the word. But whenpaganushad come to connote heathenism, the very unimportant circumstance, with reference to that fact, of the place of residence, was soon disregarded in the employment of the word. As there was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting heathens who lived in the country, there was no need for a separate word to[pg 482]denote them; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to mean that exclusively.A case still more familiar to most readers is that of the wordvillainorvillein. This term, as every body knows, had in the Middle Ages a connotation as strictly defined as a word could have, being the proper legal designation for those persons who were the subjects of the less onerous forms of feudal bondage. The scorn of the semi-barbarous military aristocracy for these their abject dependants, rendered the act of likening any person to this class of people a mark of the greatest contumely; the same scorn led them to ascribe to the same people all manner of hateful qualities, which doubtless also, in the degrading situation in which they were held, were often not unjustly imputed to them. These circumstances combined to attach to the term villain ideas of crime and guilt, in so forcible a manner that the application of the epithet even to those to whom it legally belonged became an affront, and was abstained from whenever no affront was intended. From that time guilt was part of the connotation; and soon became the whole of it, since mankind were not prompted by any urgent motive to continue making a distinction in their language between bad men of servile station and bad men of any other rank in life.These and similar instances in which the original signification of a term is totally lost—another and an entirely distinct meaning being first ingrafted upon the former, and finally substituted for it—afford examples of the double movement which is always taking place in language: two counter-movements, one of Generalization, by which words are perpetually losing portions of their connotation, and becoming of less meaning and more general acceptation; the other of Specialization, by which other, or even these same words, are continually taking on fresh connotation; acquiring additional meaning by being restricted in their employment to a part only of the occasions on which they might properly be used before. This double movement is of sufficient importance in the natural history of language (to which natural history the artificial modifications ought always to have some degree of reference), to justify our dwelling a little longer on the nature of the twofold phenomenon, and the causes to which it owes its existence.§ 3. To begin with the movement of generalization. It might seem unnecessary to dwell on the changes in the meaning of names which take place merely from their being used ignorantly, by persons who, not having properly mastered the received connotation of a word, apply it in a looser and wider sense than belongs to it. This, however, is a real source of alterations in the language; for when a word, from being often employed in cases where one of the qualities which it connotes does not exist, ceases to suggest that quality with certainty, then even those who are under no mistake as to the proper meaning of the word, prefer expressing that meaning in some other way, and leave the original word to its fate. The word ’Squire, as standing for an owner of a landed estate; Parson, as denoting not the rector of the parish, but clergymen in general; Artist, to denote only a painter or sculptor; are cases in point. Such cases give a clear insight into the process of the degeneration of languages in periods of history when literary culture was suspended; and we are now in danger of experiencing a similar evil through the superficial extension of the same culture. So many persons without any thing deserving the name of education have become writers by profession, that written language may almost[pg 483]be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verbtranspireformerly conveyed very expressively its correct meaning, viz., tobecome knownthrough unnoticed channels—to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapor or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonym ofto happen:“the events which havetranspiredin the Crimea,”meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the dispatches of noblemen and viceroys; and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense. In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown to genuine English. The use of“aggravating”for“provoking,”in my boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers, and into many books; and when the word is used in its proper sense, as when writers on criminal law speak of aggravating and extenuating circumstances, their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood. It is a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing one’s self clearly with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the wordaloneas an adverb,onlynot being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ignorance. A man will say“to which I am not alone bound by honor but also by law,”unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he isnot alonebound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly, if any one said,“I am not alone responsible for this,”he was understood to mean (what alone his words mean in correct English), that he is not the sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be confused between that and two other meanings: that he is notonly responsiblebut something more; or that he is responsiblenot only for thisbut for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson’s Œnone could not say,“I will not die alone,”lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die but do something else.The blunder of writingpredicateforpredicthas become so widely diffused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical term“to eliminate”is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are acquainted either with the proper use of the word or with its etymology know that to eliminate a thing is to thrust it out: but those who know nothing about it, except that it is a fine-looking phrase, use it in a sense precisely the reverse, to denote, not turning any thing out, but bringing it in. They talk ofeliminatingsome truth, or other useful result, from a mass of details.220A similar permanent deterioration in the language is[pg 484]in danger of being produced by the blunders of translators. The writers of telegrams, and the foreign correspondents of newspapers, have gone on so long translatingdemanderby“to demand,”without a suspicion that it means only to ask, that (the context generally showing that nothing else is meant) English readers are gradually associating the English word demand with simple asking, thus leaving the language without a term to express a demand in its proper sense. In like manner,“transaction,”the French word for a compromise, is translated into the English word transaction; while, curiously enough, the inverse change is taking place in France, where the word“compromis”has lately begun to be used for expressing the same idea. If this continues, the two countries will have exchanged phrases.Independently, however, of the generalization of names through their ignorant misuse, there is a tendency in the same direction consistently with a perfect knowledge of their meaning; arising from the fact, that the number of things known to us, and of which we feel a desire to speak, multiply faster than the names for them. Except on subjects for which there has been constructed a scientific terminology, with which unscientific persons do not meddle, great difficulty is generally found in bringing a new name into use; and independently of that difficulty, it is natural to prefer giving to a new object a name which at least expresses its resemblance to something already known, since by predicating of it a name entirely new we at first convey no information. In this manner the name of a species often becomes the name of a genus; assalt, for example, oroil; the former of which words originally denoted only the muriate of soda, the latter, as its etymology indicates, only olive-oil; but which now denote large and diversified classes of substances resembling these in some of their qualities, and connote only those common qualities, instead of the whole of the distinctive properties of olive-oil and sea-salt. The wordsglassandsoapare used by modern chemists in a similar manner, to denote genera of which the substances vulgarly so called are single species. And it often happens, as in those instances, that the term keeps its special signification in addition to its more general one, and becomes ambiguous, that is, two names instead of one.These changes, by which words in ordinary use become more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take place in a still greater degree with the words which express the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, travelers, and in general those who speak or write concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are not familiarly acquainted, are the great agents in this modification of language. The vocabulary of all except unusually instructed as well as thinking persons, is, on such subjects, eminently scanty. They have a certain small set of words to which they are accustomed, and which they employ to express phenomena the most heterogeneous, because they have never sufficiently analyzed the facts to which those words correspond in their own country, to have attached perfectly definite ideas to the words. The first English conquerors of Bengal, for example, carried with them the phraselanded proprietorinto a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of[pg 485]things; to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right, from another because he had not an absolute right they took away all right, drove whole classes of people to ruin and despair, filled the country with banditti, created a feeling that nothing was secure, and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization of society which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders. Yet the usage of persons capable of so gross a misapprehension determines the meaning of language; and the words they thus misuse grow in generality, until the instructed are obliged to acquiesce; and to employ those words (first freeing them from vagueness by giving them a definite connotation) as generic terms, subdividing the genera into species.§ 4. While the more rapid growth of ideas than of names thus creates a perpetual necessity for making the same names serve, even if imperfectly, on a greater number of occasions; a counter-operation is going on, by which names become on the contrary restricted to fewer occasions, by taking on, as it were, additional connotation, from circumstances not originally included in the meaning, but which have become connected with it in the mind by some accidental cause. We have seen above, in the wordspaganandvillain, remarkable examples of the specialization of the meaning of words from casual associations, as well as of the generalization of it in a new direction, which often follows.Similar specializations are of frequent occurrence in the history even of scientific nomenclature.“It is by no means uncommon,”says Dr. Paris, in hisPharmacologia,221“to find a word which is used to express general characters subsequently become the name of a specific substance in which such characters are predominant; and we shall find that some important anomalies in nomenclature may be thus explained. The term Αρσενίκον, from which the word Arsenic is derived, was an ancient epithet applied to those natural substances which possessed strong and acrimonious properties; and as the poisonous quality of arsenic was found to be remarkably powerful, the term was especially applied to Orpiment, the form in which this metal most usually occurred. So the termVerbena(quasiHerbena) originally denoted all those herbs that were held sacred on account of their being employed in the rites of sacrifice, as we learn from the poets; but asoneherb was usually adopted upon these occasions, the word Verbena came to denote that particular herbonly, and it is transmitted to us to this day under the same title, viz., Verbena or Vervain, and indeed until lately it enjoyed the medical reputation which its sacred origin conferred upon it, for it was worn suspended around the neck as an amulet.Vitriol, in the original application of the word, denotedanycrystalline body with a certain degree of transparency (vitrum); it is hardly necessary to observe that the term is now appropriated to a particular species: in the same manner, Bark, which is a general term, is applied to expressonegenus, and by way of eminence it has the articleTheprefixed, asThebark; the same observation will apply to the word Opium, which, in its primitive sense, signifiesanyjuice (ὀπὸς,Succus), while it now only denotesonespecies, viz., that of the poppy. So, again,Elateriumwas used by Hippocrates to signify various internal applications, especially purgatives, of a violent and drastic nature (from the word ἐλαύνω,agito,moveo,stimulo), but by succeeding authors it was exclusively applied to denote the active matter which subsides[pg 486]from the juice of the wild cucumber. The wordFecula, again, originally meant to implyanysubstance which was derived by spontaneous subsidence from a liquid (fromfæx, the grounds or settlement ofanyliquor); afterward it was applied to Starch, which is deposited in this manner by agitating the flour of wheat in water; and, lastly, it has been applied to a peculiar vegetable principle, which, like starch, is insoluble in cold, but completely soluble in boiling water, with which it forms a gelatinous solution. This indefinite meaning of the wordfeculahas created numerous mistakes in pharmaceutic chemistry; Elaterium, for instance, is said to befecula, and, in the original sense of the word, it is properly so called, inasmuch as it is procured from a vegetable juice by spontaneous subsidence, but in the limited and modern acceptation of the term it conveys an erroneous idea; for instead of the active principle of the juice residing infecula, it is a peculiar proximate principle,sui generis, to which I have ventured to bestow the name ofElatin. For the same reason, much doubt and obscurity involve the meaning of the wordExtract, because it is appliedgenerallyto any substance obtained by the evaporation of a vegetable solution, andspecificallyto a peculiar proximate principle, possessed of certain characters, by which it is distinguished from every other elementary body.”A generic term is always liable to become thus limited to a single species, or even individual, if people have occasion to think and speak of that individual or species much oftener than of any thing else which is contained in the genus. Thus by cattle, a stage-coachman will understand horses; beasts, in the language of agriculturists, stands for oxen; and birds, with some sportsmen, for partridges only. The law of language which operates in these trivial instances is the very same in conformity to which the terms Θεός, Deus, and God, were adopted from Polytheism by Christianity, to express the single object of its own adoration. Almost all the terminology of the Christian Church is made up of words originally used in a much more general acceptation:Ecclesia, Assembly;Bishop, Episcopus, Overseer;Priest, Presbyter, Elder;Deacon, Diaconus, Administrator;Sacrament, a vow of allegiance;Evangelium, good tidings; and some words, asMinister, are still used both in the general and in the limited sense. It would be interesting to trace the progress by whichauthorcame, in its most familiar sense, to signify a writer, and ποίητης, or maker, a poet.Of the incorporation into the meaning of a term, of circumstances accidentally connected with it at some particular period, as in the case of Pagan, instances might easily be multiplied. Physician (φυσίκος, or naturalist) became, in England, synonymous with a healer of diseases, because until a comparatively late period medical practitioners were the only naturalists.Clerc, or clericus, a scholar, came to signify an ecclesiastic, because the clergy were for many centuries the only scholars.Of all ideas, however, the most liable to cling by association to any thing with which they have ever been connected by proximity, are those of our pleasures and pains, or of the things which we habitually contemplate as sources of our pleasures or pains. The additional connotation, therefore, which a word soonest and most readily takes on, is that of agreeableness or painfulness, in their various kinds and degrees; of being a good or bad thing; desirable or to be avoided; an object of hatred, of dread, contempt, admiration, hope, or love. Accordingly there is hardly a single name, expressive of any moral or social fact calculated to call forth strong affections either of a favorable or of a hostile nature, which does not carry with it decidedly and irresistibly a connotation of those strong affections, or, at the[pg 487]least, of approbation or censure; insomuch that to employ those names in conjunction with others by which the contrary sentiments were expressed, would produce the effect of a paradox, or even a contradiction in terms. The baneful influence of a connotation thus acquired, on the prevailing habits of thought, especially in morals and politics, has been well pointed out on many occasions by Bentham. It gives rise to the fallacy of“question-begging names.”The very property which we are inquiring whether a thing possesses or not, has become so associated with the name of the thing as to be part of its meaning, insomuch that by merely uttering the name we assume the point which was to be made out; one of the most frequent sources of apparently self-evident propositions.Without any further multiplication of examples to illustrate the changes which usage is continually making in the signification of terms, I shall add, as a practical rule, that the logician, not being able to prevent such transformations, should submit to them with a good grace when they are irrevocably effected, and if a definition is necessary, define the word according to its new meaning; retaining the former as a second signification, if it is needed, and if there is any chance of being able to preserve it either in the language of philosophy or in common use. Logicians can notmakethe meaning of any but scientific terms; that of all other words is made by the collective human race. But logicians can ascertain clearly what it is which, working obscurely, has guided the general mind to a particular employment of a name; and when they have found this, they can clothe it in such distinct and permanent terms, that mankind shall see the meaning which before they only felt, and shall not suffer it to be afterward forgotten or misapprehended.Chapter VI.The Principles Of A Philosophical Language Further Considered.§ 1. We have, thus far, considered only one of the requisites of a language adapted for the investigation of truth; that its terms shall each of them convey a determinate and unmistakable meaning. There are, however, as we have already remarked, other requisites; some of them important only in the second degree, but one which is fundamental, and barely yields in point of importance, if it yields at all, to the quality which we have already discussed at so much length. That the language may be fitted for its purposes, not only should every word perfectly express its meaning, but there should be no important meaning without its word. Whatever we have occasion to think of often, and for scientific purposes, ought to have a name appropriated to it.This requisite of philosophical language may be considered under three different heads; that number of separate conditions being involved in it.§ 2. First, there ought to be all such names, as are needful for making such a record of individual observations that the words of the record shall exactly show what fact it is which has been observed. In other words, there should be an accurate Descriptive Terminology.The only things which we can observe directly being our own sensations, or other feelings, a complete descriptive language would be one in which there should be a name for every variety of elementary sensation or feeling.[pg 488]Combinations of sensations or feelings may always be described, if we have a name for each of the elementary feelings which compose them; but brevity of description, and clearness (which often depends very much on brevity), are greatly promoted by giving distinctive names not to the elements alone, but also to all combinations which are of frequent recurrence. On this occasion I can not do better than quote from Dr. Whewell222some of the excellent remarks which he has made on this important branch of our subject.“The meaning of [descriptive] technical terms can be fixed in the first instance only by convention, and can be made intelligible only by presenting to the senses that which the terms are to signify. The knowledge of a color by its name can only be taught through the eye. No description can convey to a hearer what we mean byapple-greenorFrench gray. It might, perhaps, be supposed that, in the first example, the termapple, referring to so familiar an object, sufficiently suggests the color intended. But it may easily be seen that this is not true; for apples are of many different hues of green, and it is only by a conventional selection that we can appropriate the term to one special shade. When this appropriation is once made, the term refers to the sensation, and not to the parts of the term; for these enter into the compound merely as a help to the memory, whether the suggestion be a natural connection as in‘apple-green,’or a casual one as in‘French gray.’In order to derive due advantage from technical terms of the kind, they must be associatedimmediatelywith the perception to which they belong; and not connected with it through the vague usages of common language. The memory must retain the sensation; and the technical word must be understood as directly as the most familiar word, and more distinctly. When we find such terms astin-whiteorpinchbeck-brown, the metallic color so denoted ought to start up in our memory without delay or search.“This, which it is most important to recollect with respect to the simpler properties of bodies, as color and form, is no less true with respect to more compound notions. In all cases the term is fixed to a peculiar meaning by convention; and the student, in order to use the word, must be completely familiar with the convention, so that he has no need to frame conjectures from the word itself. Such conjectures would always be insecure, and often erroneous. Thus the termpapilionaceousapplied to a flower is employed to indicate, not only a resemblance to a butterfly, but a resemblance arising from five petals of a certain-peculiar shape and arrangement; and even if the resemblance were much stronger than it is in such cases, yet, if it were produced in a different way, as, for example, by one petal, or two only, instead of a‘standard,’two‘wings,’and a‘keel’consisting of two parts more or less united into one, we should be no longer justified in speaking of it as a‘papilionaceous’flower.”When, however, the thing named is, as in this last case, a combination of simple sensations, it is not necessary, in order to learn the meaning of the word, that the student should refer back to the sensations themselves; it may be communicated to him through the medium of other words; the terms, in short, may be defined. But the names of elementary sensations, or elementary feelings of any sort, can not be defined; nor is there any mode of making their signification known but by making the learner experience the sensation, or referring him, through some known mark, to his[pg 489]remembrance of having experienced it before. Hence it is only the impressions on the outward senses, or those inward feelings which are connected in a very obvious and uniform manner with outward objects, that are really susceptible of an exact descriptive language. The countless variety of sensations which arise, for instance, from disease, or from peculiar physiological states, it would be in vain to attempt to name; for as no one can judge whether the sensation I have is the same with his, the name can not have, to us two, real community of meaning. The same may be said, to a considerable extent, of purely mental feelings. But in some of the sciences which are conversant with external objects, it is scarcely possible to surpass the perfection to which this quality of a philosophical language has been carried.“The formation223of an exact and extensive descriptive language for botany has been executed with a degree of skill and felicity, which, before it was attained, could hardly have been dreamed of as attainable. Every part of a plant has been named; and the form of every part, even the most minute, has had a large assemblage of descriptive terms appropriated to it, by means of which the botanist can convey and receive knowledge of form and structure, as exactly as if each minute part were presented to him vastly magnified. This acquisition was part of the Linnæan reform....‘Tournefort,’says Decandolle,‘appears to have been the first who really perceived the utility of fixing the sense of terms in such a way as always to employ the same word in the same sense, and always to express the same idea by the same words; but it was Linnæus who really created and fixed this botanical language, and this is his fairest claim to glory, for by this fixation of language he has shed clearness and precision over all parts of the science.’“It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the terms of botany. The fundamental ones have been gradually introduced, as the parts of plants were more carefully and minutely examined. Thus the flower was necessarily distinguished into thecalyx, thecorolla, thestamens, and thepistils; the sections of the corolla were termedpetalsby Columna; those of the calyx were calledsepalsby Necker. Sometimes terms of greater generality were devised; asperianth, to include the calyx and corolla, whether one or both of these were present;pericarp, for the part inclosing the grain, of whatever kind it be, fruit, nut, pod, etc. And it may easily be imagined, that descriptive terms may, by definition and combination, become very numerous and distinct. Thus leaves may be calledpinnatifid,pinnatipartite,pinnatisect,pinnatilobate,palmatifid,palmatipartite, etc., and each of these words designates different combinations of the modes and extent of the divisions of the leaf with the divisions of its outline. In some cases, arbitrary numerical relations are introduced into the definition: thus, a leaf is calledbilobate, when it is divided into two parts by a notch; but if the notch go to the middle of its length, it isbifid; if it go near the base of the leaf, it isbipartite; if to the base, it isbisect. Thus, too, a pod of a cruciferous plant is asiliqua, if it is four times as long as it is broad, but if it be shorter than this it is asilicula. Such terms being established, the form of the very complex leaf or frond of a fern (Hymenophyllum Wilsoni) is exactly conveyed by the following phrase:‘fronds rigid pinnate, pinnæ recurved subunilateral, pinnatifid, the segments linear undivided or bifid, spinuloso-serrate.’[pg 490]“Other characters, as well as form, are conveyed with the like precision: Color by means of a classified scale of colors.... This was done with most precision by Werner, and his scale of colors is still the most usual standard of naturalists. Werner also introduced a more exact terminology with regard to other characters which are important in mineralogy, as lustre, hardness. But Mohs improved upon this step by giving a numerical scale of hardness, in which talc is 1, gypsum 2, calc spar 3, and so on.... Some properties, as specific gravity, by their definition give at once a numerical measure; and others, as crystalline form, require a very considerable array of mathematical calculation and reasoning, to point out their relations and gradations.”§ 3. Thus far of Descriptive Terminology, or of the language requisite for placing on record our observation of individual instances. But when we proceed from this to Induction, or rather to that comparison of observed instances which is the preparatory step toward it, we stand in need of an additional and a different sort of general names.Whenever, for purposes of Induction, we find it necessary to introduce (in Dr. Whewell’s phraseology) some new general conception; that is, whenever the comparison of a set of phenomena leads to the recognition in them of some common circumstance, which, our attention not having been directed to it on any former occasion, is to us a new phenomenon; it is of importance that this new conception, or this new result of abstraction, should have a name appropriated to it; especially if the circumstance it involves be one which leads to many consequences, or which is likely to be found also in other classes of phenomena. No doubt, in most cases of the kind, the meaning might be conveyed by joining together several words already in use. But when a thing has to be often spoken of, there are more reasons than the saving of time and space, for speaking of it in the most concise manner possible. What darkness would be spread over geometrical demonstrations, if wherever the wordcircleis used, the definition of a circle were inserted instead of it. In mathematics and its applications, where the nature of the processes demands that the attention should be strongly concentrated, but does not require that it should be widely diffused, the importance of concentration also in the expressions has always been duly felt; and a mathematician no sooner finds that he shall often have occasion to speak of the same two things together, than he at once creates a term to express them whenever combined: just as, in his algebraical operations, he substitutes for (am+bn) p/q, or fora/b+b/c+c/d+ etc., the single letter P, Q, or S; not solely to shorten his symbolical expressions, but to simplify the purely intellectual part of his operations, by enabling the mind to give its exclusive attention to the relation between the quantity S and the other quantities which enter into the equation, without being distracted by thinking unnecessarily of the parts of which S is itself composed.But there is another reason, in addition to that of promoting perspicuity, for giving a brief and compact name to each of the more considerable results of abstraction which are obtained in the course of our intellectual phenomena. By naming them, we fix our attention upon them; we keep them more constantly before the mind. The names are remembered, and being remembered, suggest their definition; while if instead of specific[pg 491]and characteristic names, the meaning had been expressed by putting together a number of other names, that particular combination of words already in common use for other purposes would have had nothing to make itself remembered by. If we want to render a particular combination of ideas permanent in the mind, there is nothing which clinches it like a name specially devoted to express it. If mathematicians had been obliged to speak of“that to which a quantity, in increasing or diminishing, is always approaching nearer, so that the difference becomes less than any assignable quantity, but to which it never becomes exactly equal,”instead of expressing all this by the simple phrase,“the limit of a quantity,”we should probably have long remained without most of the important truths which have been discovered by means of the relation between quantities of various kinds and their limits. If instead of speaking ofmomentum, it had been necessary to say,“the product of the number of units of velocity in the velocity by the number of units of mass in the mass,”many of the dynamical truths now apprehended by means of this complex idea would probably have escaped notice, for want of recalling the idea itself with sufficient readiness and familiarity. And on subjects less remote from the topics of popular discussion, whoever wishes to draw attention to some new or unfamiliar distinction among things, will find no way so sure as to invent or select suitable names for the express purpose of marking it.A volume devoted to explaining what the writer means by civilization, does not raise so vivid a conception of it as the single expression, that Civilization is a different thing from Cultivation; the compactness of that brief designation for the contrasted quality being an equivalent for a long discussion. So, if we would impress forcibly upon the understanding and memory the distinction between the two different conceptions of a representative government, we can not more effectually do so than by saying that Delegation is not Representation. Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind, or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors, until aptly-selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fast.§ 4. Of the three essential parts of a philosophical language, we have now mentioned two: a terminology suited for describing with precision the individual facts observed; and a name for every common property of any importance or interest, which we detect by comparing those facts; including (as the concretes corresponding to those abstract terms) names for the classes which we artificially construct in virtue of those properties, or as many of them, at least, as we have frequent occasion to predicate any thing of.But there is a sort of classes, for the recognition of which no such elaborate process is necessary; because each of them is marked out from all others not by some one property, the detection of which may depend on a difficult act of abstraction, but by its properties generally. I mean, the Kinds of things, in the sense which, in this treatise, has been specially attached to that term. By a Kind, it will be remembered, we mean one of those classes which are distinguished from all others not by one or a few definite properties, but by an unknown multitude of them; the combination of properties on which the class is grounded, being a mere index to an indefinite number of other distinctive attributes. The class horse is a Kind, because the things which agree in possessing the characters by which[pg 492]we recognize a horse, agree in a great number of other properties, as we know, and, it can not be doubted, in many more than we know. Animal, again, is a Kind, because no definition that could be given of the name animal could either exhaust the properties common to all animals, or supply premises from which the remainder of those properties could be inferred. But a combination of properties which does not give evidence of the existence of any other independent peculiarities, does not constitute a Kind. White horse, therefore, is not a Kind; because horses which agree in whiteness, do not agree in any thing else, except the qualities common to all horses, and whatever may be the causes or effects of that particular color.On the principle that there should be a name for every thing which we have frequent occasion to make assertions about, there ought evidently to be a name for every Kind; for as it is the very meaning of a Kind that the individuals composing it have an indefinite multitude of properties in common, it follows that, if not with our present knowledge, yet with that which we may hereafter acquire, the Kind is a subject to which there will have to be applied many predicates. The third component element of a philosophical language, therefore, is that there shall be a name for every Kind. In other words, there must not only be a terminology, but also a nomenclature.The words Nomenclature and Terminology are employed by most authors almost indiscriminately; Dr. Whewell being, as far as I am aware, the first writer who has regularly assigned to the two words different meanings. The distinction, however, which he has drawn between them being real and important, his example is likely to be followed; and (as is apt to be the case when such innovations in language are felicitously made) a vague sense of the distinction is found to have influenced the employment of the terms in common practice, before the expediency had been pointed out of discriminating them philosophically. Every one would say that the reform effected by Lavoisier and Guyton-Morveau in the language of chemistry consisted in the introduction of a new nomenclature, not of a new terminology. Linear, lanceolate, oval, or oblong, serrated, dentate, or crenate leaves, are expressions forming part of the terminology of botany, while the names“Viola odorata,”and“Ulex Europæus,”belong to its nomenclature.A nomenclature may be defined, the collection of the names of all the Kinds with which any branch of knowledge is conversant; or more properly, of all the lowest Kinds, orinfirmæ species—those which may be subdivided indeed, but not into Kinds, and which generally accord with what in natural history are termed simply species. Science possesses two splendid examples of a systematic nomenclature; that of plants and animals, constructed by Linnæus and his successors, and that of chemistry, which we owe to the illustrious group of chemists who flourished in France toward the close of the eighteenth century. In these two departments, not only has every known species, or lowest Kind, a name assigned to it, but when new lowest Kinds are discovered, names are at once given to them on a uniform principle. In other sciences the nomenclature is not at present constructed on any system, either because the species to be named are not numerous enough to require one (as in geometry, for example), or because no one has yet suggested a suitable principle for such a system, as in mineralogy; in which the want of a scientifically constructed nomenclature is now the principal cause which retards the progress of the science.[pg 493]§ 5. A word which carries on its face that it belongs to a nomenclature, seems at first sight to differ from other concrete general names in this—that its meaning does not reside in its connotation, in the attributes implied in it, but in its denotation, that is, in the particular group of things which it is appointed to designate; and can not, therefore, be unfolded by means of a definition, but must be made known in another way. This opinion, however, appears to me erroneous. Words belonging to a nomenclature differ, I conceive, from other words mainly in this, that besides the ordinary connotation, they have a peculiar one of their own: besides connoting certain attributes, they also connote that those attributes are distinctive of a Kind. The term“peroxide of iron,”for example, belonging by its form to the systematic nomenclature of chemistry, bears on its face that it is the name of a peculiar Kind of substance. It moreover connotes, like the name of any other class, some portion of the properties common to the class; in this instance the property of being a compound of iron and the largest dose of oxygen with which iron will combine. These two things, the fact of being such a compound, and the fact of being a Kind, constitute the connotation of the name peroxide of iron. When we say of the substance before us, that it is the peroxide of iron, we thereby assert, first, that it is a compound of iron and a maximum of oxygen, and next, that the substance so composed is a peculiar Kind of substance.Now, this second part of the connotation of any word belonging to a nomenclature is as essential a portion of its meaning as the first part, while the definition only declares the first; and hence the appearance that the signification of such terms can not be conveyed by a definition: which appearance, however, is fallacious. The name Viola odorata denotes a Kind, of which a certain number of characters, sufficient to distinguish it, are enunciated in botanical works. This enumeration of characters is surely, as in other cases, a definition of the name. No, say some, it is not a definition, for the name Viola odorata does not mean those characters; it means that particular group of plants, and the characters are selected from among a much greater number, merely as marks by which to recognize the group. But to this I reply, that the name does not mean that group, for it would be applied to that group no longer than while the group is believed to be aninfima species; if it were to be discovered that several distinct Kinds have been confounded under this one name, no one would any longer apply the name Viola odorata to the whole of the group, but would apply it, if retained at all, to one only of the Kinds retained therein. What is imperative, therefore, is not that the name shall denote one particular collection of objects, but that it shall denote a Kind, and a lowest Kind. The form of the name declares that, happen what will, it is to denote aninfima species; and that, therefore, the properties which it connotes, and which are expressed in the definition, are to be connoted by it no longer than while we continue to believe that those properties, when found together, indicate a Kind, and that the whole of them are found in no more than one Kind.With the addition of this peculiar connotation, implied in the form of every word which belongs to a systematic nomenclature; the set of characters which is employed to discriminate each Kind from all other Kinds (and which is a real definition) constitutes as completely as in any other case the whole meaning of the term. It is no objection to say that (as is often the case in natural history) the set of characters may be changed, and another substituted as being better suited for the purpose[pg 494]of distinction, while the word, still continuing to denote the same group or things, is not considered to have changed its meaning. For this is no more than may happen in the case of any other general name: we may, in reforming its connotation, leave its denotation untouched; and it is generally desirable to do so. The connotation, however, is not the less for this the real meaning, for we at once apply the name wherever the characters set down in the definition are found; and that which exclusively guides us in applying the term, must constitute its signification. If we find, contrary to our previous belief, that the characters are not peculiar to one species, we cease to use the term co-extensively with the characters; but then it is because the other portion of the connotation fails; the condition that the class must be a Kind. The connotation, therefore, is still the meaning; the set of descriptive characters is a true definition; and the meaning is unfolded, not indeed (as in other cases) by the definition alone, but by the definition and the form of the word taken together.§ 6. We have now analyzed what is implied in the two principal requisites of a philosophical language; first, precision, or definiteness; and, secondly, completeness. Any further remarks on the mode of constructing a nomenclature must be deferred until we treat of Classification; the mode of naming the Kinds of things being necessarily subordinate to the mode of arranging those Kinds into larger classes. With respect to the minor requisites of terminology, some of them are well stated and illustrated in the“Aphorisms concerning the Language of Science,”included in Dr. Whewell’sPhilosophy of the Inductive Sciences. These, as being of secondary importance in the peculiar point of view of Logic, I shall not further refer to, but shall confine my observations to one more quality, which, next to the two already treated of, appears to be the most valuable which the language of science can possess. Of this quality a general notion may be conveyed by the following aphorism:Whenever the nature of the subject permits our reasoning processes to be, without danger, carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while, in the contrary case, it should be so constructed that there shall be the greatest possible obstacles to a merely mechanical use of it.I am aware that this maxim requires much explanation, which I shall at once proceed to give. At first, as to what is meant by using a language mechanically. The complete or extreme case of the mechanical use of language, is when it is used without any consciousness of a meaning, and with only the consciousness of using certain visible or audible marks in conformity to technical rules previously laid down. This extreme case is nowhere realized except in the figures of arithmetic, and still more the symbols of algebra, a language unique in its kind, and approaching as nearly to perfection, for the purposes to which it is destined, as can, perhaps, be said of any creation of the human mind. Its perfection consists in the completeness of its adaptation to a purely mechanical use. The symbols are mere counters, without even the semblance of a meaning apart from the convention which is renewed each time they are employed, and which is altered at each renewal, the same symbolaorxbeing used on different occasions to represent things which (except that, like all things, they are susceptible of being numbered) have no property in common. There is nothing, therefore, to distract the mind from the set of mechanical operations which are to be performed upon the symbols, such as squaring both sides[pg 495]of the equation, multiplying or dividing them by the same or by equivalent symbols, and so forth. Each of these operations, it is true, corresponds to a syllogism; represents one step of a ratiocination relating not to the symbols, but to the things signified by them. But as it has been found practicable to frame a technical form, by conforming to which we can make sure of finding the conclusion of the ratiocination, our end can be completely attained without our ever thinking of any thing but the symbols. Being thus intended to work merely as mechanism, they have the qualities which mechanism ought to have. They are of the least possible bulk, so that they take up scarcely any room, and waste no time in their manipulation; they are compact, and fit so closely together that the eye can take in the whole at once of almost every operation which they are employed to perform.These admirable properties of the symbolical language of mathematics have made so strong an impression on the minds of many thinkers, as to have led them to consider the symbolical language in question as the ideal type of philosophical language generally; to think that names in general, or (as they are fond of calling them) signs, are fitted for the purposes of thought in proportion as they can be made to approximate to the compactness, the entire unmeaningness, and the capability of being used as counters without a thought of what they represent, which are characteristic of theaandb, thexandy, of algebra. This notion has led to sanguine views of the acceleration of the progress of science by means which, I conceive, can not possibly conduce to that end, and forms part of that exaggerated estimate of the influence of signs, which has contributed in no small degree to prevent the real laws of our intellectual operations from being rightly understood.In the first place, a set of signs by which we reason without consciousness of their meaning, can be serviceable, at most, only in our deductive operations. In our direct inductions we can not for a moment dispense with a distinct mental image of the phenomena, since the whole operation turns on a perception of the particulars in which those phenomena agree and differ. But, further, this reasoning by counters is only suitable to a very limited portion even of our deductive processes. In our reasonings respecting numbers, the only general principles which we ever have occasion to introduce are these, Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and The sums or differences of equal things are equal; with their various corollaries. Not only can no hesitation ever arise respecting the applicability of these principles, since they are true of all magnitudes whatever; but every possible application of which they are susceptible, may be reduced to a technical rule; and such, in fact, the rules of the calculus are. But if the symbols represent any other things than mere numbers, let us say even straight or curve lines, we have then to apply theorems of geometry not true of all lines without exception, and to select those which are true of the lines we are reasoning about. And how can we do this unless we keep completely in mind what particular lines these are? Since additional geometrical truths may be introduced into the ratiocination in any stage of its progress, we can not suffer ourselves, during even the smallest part of it, to use the names mechanically (as we use algebraical symbols) without an image annexed to them. It is only after ascertaining that the solution of a question concerning lines can be made to depend on a previous question concerning numbers, or, in other words, after the question has been (to speak technically) reduced to an equation, that the unmeaning signs become available, and that the nature of the facts themselves to which the investigation[pg 496]relates can be dismissed from the mind. Up to the establishment of the equation, the language in which mathematicians carry on their reasoning does not differ in character from that employed by close reasoners on any other kind of subject.I do not deny that every correct ratiocination, when thrown into the syllogistic shape, is conclusive from the mere form of the expression, provided none of the terms used be ambiguous; and this is one of the circumstances which have led some writers to think that if all names were so judiciously constructed and so carefully defined as not to admit of any ambiguity, the improvement thus made in language would not only give to the conclusions of every deductive science the same certainty with those of mathematics, but would reduce all reasonings to the application of a technical form, and enable their conclusiveness to be rationally assented to after a merely mechanical process, as is undoubtedly the case in algebra. But, if we except geometry, the conclusions of which are already as certain and exact as they can be made, there is no science but that of number, in which the practical validity of a reasoning can be apparent to any person who has looked only at the reasoning itself. Whoever has assented to what was said in the last Book concerning the case of the Composition of Causes, and the still stronger case of the entire supersession of one set of laws by another, is aware that geometry and algebra are the only sciences of which the propositions are categorically true; the general propositions of all other sciences are true only hypothetically, supposing that no counteracting cause happens to interfere. A conclusion, therefore, however correctly deduced, in point of form, from admitted laws of nature, will have no other than an hypothetical certainty. At every step we must assure ourselves that no other law of nature has superseded, or intermingled its operation with, those which are the premises of the reasoning; and how can this be done by merely looking at the words? We must not only be constantly thinking of the phenomena themselves, but we must be constantly studying them; making ourselves acquainted with the peculiarities of every case to which we attempt to apply our general principles.The algebraic notation, considered as a philosophical language, is perfect in its adaptation to the subjects for which it is commonly employed, namely those of which the investigations have already been reduced to the ascertainment of a relation between numbers. But, admirable as it is for its own purpose, the properties by which it is rendered such are so far from constituting it the ideal model of philosophical language in general, that the more nearly the language of any other branch of science approaches to it, the less fit that language is for its own proper functions. On all other subjects, instead of contrivances to prevent our attention from being distracted by thinking of the meaning of our signs, we ought to wish for contrivances to make it impossible that we should ever lose sight of that meaning even for an instant.With this view, as much meaning as possible should be thrown into the formation of the word itself; the aids of derivation and analogy being made available to keep alive a consciousness of all that is signified by it. In this respect those languages have an immense advantage which form their compounds and derivatives from native roots, like the German, and not from those of a foreign or dead language, as is so much the case with English, French, and Italian; and the best are those which form them according to fixed analogies, corresponding to the relations between the ideas to be expressed. All languages do this more or less, but especially, among modern[pg 497]European languages, the German; while even that is inferior to the Greek, in which the relation between the meaning of a derivative word and that of its primitive is in general clearly marked by its mode of formation, except in the case of words compounded with prepositions, which are often, in both those languages, extremely anomalous.But all that can be done, by the mode of constructing words, to prevent them from degenerating into sounds passing through the mind without any distinct apprehension of what they signify, is far too little for the necessity of the case. Words, however well constructed originally, are always tending, like coins, to have their inscription worn off by passing from hand to hand; and the only possible mode of reviving it is to be ever stamping it afresh, by living in the habitual contemplation of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity with the words that express them. If any one, having possessed himself of the laws of phenomena as recorded in words, whether delivered to him originally by others, or even found out by himself, is content from thenceforth to live among these formulæ, to think exclusively of them, and of applying them to cases as they arise, without keeping up his acquaintance with the realities from which these laws were collected—not only will he continually fail in his practical efforts, because he will apply his formulæ without duly considering whether, in this case and in that, other laws of nature do not modify or supersede them; but the formulæ themselves will progressively lose their meaning to him, and he will cease at last even to be capable of recognizing with certainty whether a case falls within the contemplation of his formula or not. It is, in short, as necessary, on all subjects not mathematical, that the things on which we reason should be conceived by us in the concrete, and“clothed in circumstances,”as it is in algebra that we should keep all individualizing peculiarities sedulously out of view.With this remark we close our observations on the Philosophy of Language.

Chapter V.On The Natural History Of The Variations In The Meaning Of Terms.§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth is, that the connotation of such words is perpetually varying; as might be expected from the manner in which words in common use acquire their connotation. A technical term, invented for purposes of art or science, has, from the first, the connotation given to it by its inventor; but a name which is in every one’s mouth before any one thinks of defining it, derives its connotation only from the circumstances which are habitually brought to mind when it is pronounced. Among these circumstances, the properties common to the things denoted by the name, have naturally a principal place; and would have the sole place, if language were regulated by convention rather than by custom and accident. But besides these common properties, which if they exist arecertainlypresent whenever the name is employed, any other circumstance maycasuallybe found along with it, so frequently as to become associated with it in the same manner, and as strongly, as the common properties themselves. In proportion as this association forms itself, people give up using the name in cases in which those casual circumstances do not exist. They prefer using some other name, or the same name with some adjunct, rather than employ an expression which will call up an idea they do not want to excite. The circumstance originally casual, thus becomes regularly a part of the connotation of the word.It is this continual incorporation of circumstances originally accidental, into the permanent signification of words, which is the cause that there are so few exact synonyms. It is this also which renders the dictionary meaning of a word, by universal remark so imperfect an exponent of its real meaning. The dictionary meaning is marked out in a broad, blunt way, and probably includes all that was originally necessary for the correct employment of the term; but in process of time so many collateral associations adhere to words, that whoever should attempt to use them with no other guide than the dictionary, would confound a thousand nice distinctions and subtle shades of meaning which dictionaries take no account of; as we notice in the use of a language in conversation or writing by a foreigner not thoroughly master of it. The history of a word, by showing the causes which determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment than any definition; for definitions can only show its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its history may show the law by which the succession was produced. The wordgentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. From this it came by degrees to connote all such qualities or adventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of that rank. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar acceptations it means any one who lives without labor, in another without manual[pg 481]labor, and in its more elevated signification it has in every age signified the conduct, character, habits, and outward appearance, in whomsoever found, which, according to the ideas of that age, belonged or were expected to belong to persons born and educated in a high social position.It continually happens that of two words, whose dictionary meanings are either the same or very slightly different, one will be the proper word to use in one set of circumstances, another in another, without its being possible to show how the custom of so employing them originally grew up. The accident that one of the words was used and not the other on a particular occasion or in a particular social circle, will be sufficient to produce so strong an association between the word and some specialty of circumstances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any other case, and the specialty becomes part of its signification. The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there.An instance in point is the remarkable change which, in the English language at least, has taken place in the signification of the wordloyalty. That word originally meant in English, as it still means in the language from whence it came, fair, open dealing, and fidelity to engagements; in that sense the quality it expressed was part of the ideal chivalrous or knightly character. By what process, in England, the term became restricted to the single case of fidelity to the throne, I am not sufficiently versed in the history of courtly language to be able to pronounce. The interval between aloyal chevalierand a loyal subject is certainly great. I can only suppose that the word was, at some period, the favorite term at court to express fidelity to the oath of allegiance; until at length those who wished to speak of any other, and as it was probably deemed, inferior sort of fidelity, either did not venture to use so dignified a term, or found it convenient to employ some other in order to avoid being misunderstood.§ 2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, at first casually incorporated into the connotation of a word which originally had no reference to it, in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and becomes not merely a part of the connotation, but the whole of it. This is exemplified in the word pagan,paganus; which originally, as its etymology imports, was equivalent tovillager; the inhabitant of apagus, or village. At a particular era in the extension of Christianity over the Roman empire, the adherents of the old religion, and the villagers or country people, were nearly the same body of individuals, the inhabitants of the towns having been earliest converted; as in our own day, and at all times, the greater activity of social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients of new opinions and modes, while old habits and prejudices linger longest among the country people; not to mention that the towns were more immediately under the direct influence of the Government, which at that time had embraced Christianity. From this casual coincidence, the wordpaganuscarried with it, and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea of a worshiper of the ancient divinities; until at length it suggested that idea so forcibly that people who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided using the word. But whenpaganushad come to connote heathenism, the very unimportant circumstance, with reference to that fact, of the place of residence, was soon disregarded in the employment of the word. As there was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting heathens who lived in the country, there was no need for a separate word to[pg 482]denote them; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to mean that exclusively.A case still more familiar to most readers is that of the wordvillainorvillein. This term, as every body knows, had in the Middle Ages a connotation as strictly defined as a word could have, being the proper legal designation for those persons who were the subjects of the less onerous forms of feudal bondage. The scorn of the semi-barbarous military aristocracy for these their abject dependants, rendered the act of likening any person to this class of people a mark of the greatest contumely; the same scorn led them to ascribe to the same people all manner of hateful qualities, which doubtless also, in the degrading situation in which they were held, were often not unjustly imputed to them. These circumstances combined to attach to the term villain ideas of crime and guilt, in so forcible a manner that the application of the epithet even to those to whom it legally belonged became an affront, and was abstained from whenever no affront was intended. From that time guilt was part of the connotation; and soon became the whole of it, since mankind were not prompted by any urgent motive to continue making a distinction in their language between bad men of servile station and bad men of any other rank in life.These and similar instances in which the original signification of a term is totally lost—another and an entirely distinct meaning being first ingrafted upon the former, and finally substituted for it—afford examples of the double movement which is always taking place in language: two counter-movements, one of Generalization, by which words are perpetually losing portions of their connotation, and becoming of less meaning and more general acceptation; the other of Specialization, by which other, or even these same words, are continually taking on fresh connotation; acquiring additional meaning by being restricted in their employment to a part only of the occasions on which they might properly be used before. This double movement is of sufficient importance in the natural history of language (to which natural history the artificial modifications ought always to have some degree of reference), to justify our dwelling a little longer on the nature of the twofold phenomenon, and the causes to which it owes its existence.§ 3. To begin with the movement of generalization. It might seem unnecessary to dwell on the changes in the meaning of names which take place merely from their being used ignorantly, by persons who, not having properly mastered the received connotation of a word, apply it in a looser and wider sense than belongs to it. This, however, is a real source of alterations in the language; for when a word, from being often employed in cases where one of the qualities which it connotes does not exist, ceases to suggest that quality with certainty, then even those who are under no mistake as to the proper meaning of the word, prefer expressing that meaning in some other way, and leave the original word to its fate. The word ’Squire, as standing for an owner of a landed estate; Parson, as denoting not the rector of the parish, but clergymen in general; Artist, to denote only a painter or sculptor; are cases in point. Such cases give a clear insight into the process of the degeneration of languages in periods of history when literary culture was suspended; and we are now in danger of experiencing a similar evil through the superficial extension of the same culture. So many persons without any thing deserving the name of education have become writers by profession, that written language may almost[pg 483]be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verbtranspireformerly conveyed very expressively its correct meaning, viz., tobecome knownthrough unnoticed channels—to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapor or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonym ofto happen:“the events which havetranspiredin the Crimea,”meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the dispatches of noblemen and viceroys; and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense. In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown to genuine English. The use of“aggravating”for“provoking,”in my boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers, and into many books; and when the word is used in its proper sense, as when writers on criminal law speak of aggravating and extenuating circumstances, their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood. It is a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing one’s self clearly with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the wordaloneas an adverb,onlynot being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ignorance. A man will say“to which I am not alone bound by honor but also by law,”unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he isnot alonebound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly, if any one said,“I am not alone responsible for this,”he was understood to mean (what alone his words mean in correct English), that he is not the sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be confused between that and two other meanings: that he is notonly responsiblebut something more; or that he is responsiblenot only for thisbut for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson’s Œnone could not say,“I will not die alone,”lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die but do something else.The blunder of writingpredicateforpredicthas become so widely diffused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical term“to eliminate”is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are acquainted either with the proper use of the word or with its etymology know that to eliminate a thing is to thrust it out: but those who know nothing about it, except that it is a fine-looking phrase, use it in a sense precisely the reverse, to denote, not turning any thing out, but bringing it in. They talk ofeliminatingsome truth, or other useful result, from a mass of details.220A similar permanent deterioration in the language is[pg 484]in danger of being produced by the blunders of translators. The writers of telegrams, and the foreign correspondents of newspapers, have gone on so long translatingdemanderby“to demand,”without a suspicion that it means only to ask, that (the context generally showing that nothing else is meant) English readers are gradually associating the English word demand with simple asking, thus leaving the language without a term to express a demand in its proper sense. In like manner,“transaction,”the French word for a compromise, is translated into the English word transaction; while, curiously enough, the inverse change is taking place in France, where the word“compromis”has lately begun to be used for expressing the same idea. If this continues, the two countries will have exchanged phrases.Independently, however, of the generalization of names through their ignorant misuse, there is a tendency in the same direction consistently with a perfect knowledge of their meaning; arising from the fact, that the number of things known to us, and of which we feel a desire to speak, multiply faster than the names for them. Except on subjects for which there has been constructed a scientific terminology, with which unscientific persons do not meddle, great difficulty is generally found in bringing a new name into use; and independently of that difficulty, it is natural to prefer giving to a new object a name which at least expresses its resemblance to something already known, since by predicating of it a name entirely new we at first convey no information. In this manner the name of a species often becomes the name of a genus; assalt, for example, oroil; the former of which words originally denoted only the muriate of soda, the latter, as its etymology indicates, only olive-oil; but which now denote large and diversified classes of substances resembling these in some of their qualities, and connote only those common qualities, instead of the whole of the distinctive properties of olive-oil and sea-salt. The wordsglassandsoapare used by modern chemists in a similar manner, to denote genera of which the substances vulgarly so called are single species. And it often happens, as in those instances, that the term keeps its special signification in addition to its more general one, and becomes ambiguous, that is, two names instead of one.These changes, by which words in ordinary use become more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take place in a still greater degree with the words which express the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, travelers, and in general those who speak or write concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are not familiarly acquainted, are the great agents in this modification of language. The vocabulary of all except unusually instructed as well as thinking persons, is, on such subjects, eminently scanty. They have a certain small set of words to which they are accustomed, and which they employ to express phenomena the most heterogeneous, because they have never sufficiently analyzed the facts to which those words correspond in their own country, to have attached perfectly definite ideas to the words. The first English conquerors of Bengal, for example, carried with them the phraselanded proprietorinto a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of[pg 485]things; to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right, from another because he had not an absolute right they took away all right, drove whole classes of people to ruin and despair, filled the country with banditti, created a feeling that nothing was secure, and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization of society which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders. Yet the usage of persons capable of so gross a misapprehension determines the meaning of language; and the words they thus misuse grow in generality, until the instructed are obliged to acquiesce; and to employ those words (first freeing them from vagueness by giving them a definite connotation) as generic terms, subdividing the genera into species.§ 4. While the more rapid growth of ideas than of names thus creates a perpetual necessity for making the same names serve, even if imperfectly, on a greater number of occasions; a counter-operation is going on, by which names become on the contrary restricted to fewer occasions, by taking on, as it were, additional connotation, from circumstances not originally included in the meaning, but which have become connected with it in the mind by some accidental cause. We have seen above, in the wordspaganandvillain, remarkable examples of the specialization of the meaning of words from casual associations, as well as of the generalization of it in a new direction, which often follows.Similar specializations are of frequent occurrence in the history even of scientific nomenclature.“It is by no means uncommon,”says Dr. Paris, in hisPharmacologia,221“to find a word which is used to express general characters subsequently become the name of a specific substance in which such characters are predominant; and we shall find that some important anomalies in nomenclature may be thus explained. The term Αρσενίκον, from which the word Arsenic is derived, was an ancient epithet applied to those natural substances which possessed strong and acrimonious properties; and as the poisonous quality of arsenic was found to be remarkably powerful, the term was especially applied to Orpiment, the form in which this metal most usually occurred. So the termVerbena(quasiHerbena) originally denoted all those herbs that were held sacred on account of their being employed in the rites of sacrifice, as we learn from the poets; but asoneherb was usually adopted upon these occasions, the word Verbena came to denote that particular herbonly, and it is transmitted to us to this day under the same title, viz., Verbena or Vervain, and indeed until lately it enjoyed the medical reputation which its sacred origin conferred upon it, for it was worn suspended around the neck as an amulet.Vitriol, in the original application of the word, denotedanycrystalline body with a certain degree of transparency (vitrum); it is hardly necessary to observe that the term is now appropriated to a particular species: in the same manner, Bark, which is a general term, is applied to expressonegenus, and by way of eminence it has the articleTheprefixed, asThebark; the same observation will apply to the word Opium, which, in its primitive sense, signifiesanyjuice (ὀπὸς,Succus), while it now only denotesonespecies, viz., that of the poppy. So, again,Elateriumwas used by Hippocrates to signify various internal applications, especially purgatives, of a violent and drastic nature (from the word ἐλαύνω,agito,moveo,stimulo), but by succeeding authors it was exclusively applied to denote the active matter which subsides[pg 486]from the juice of the wild cucumber. The wordFecula, again, originally meant to implyanysubstance which was derived by spontaneous subsidence from a liquid (fromfæx, the grounds or settlement ofanyliquor); afterward it was applied to Starch, which is deposited in this manner by agitating the flour of wheat in water; and, lastly, it has been applied to a peculiar vegetable principle, which, like starch, is insoluble in cold, but completely soluble in boiling water, with which it forms a gelatinous solution. This indefinite meaning of the wordfeculahas created numerous mistakes in pharmaceutic chemistry; Elaterium, for instance, is said to befecula, and, in the original sense of the word, it is properly so called, inasmuch as it is procured from a vegetable juice by spontaneous subsidence, but in the limited and modern acceptation of the term it conveys an erroneous idea; for instead of the active principle of the juice residing infecula, it is a peculiar proximate principle,sui generis, to which I have ventured to bestow the name ofElatin. For the same reason, much doubt and obscurity involve the meaning of the wordExtract, because it is appliedgenerallyto any substance obtained by the evaporation of a vegetable solution, andspecificallyto a peculiar proximate principle, possessed of certain characters, by which it is distinguished from every other elementary body.”A generic term is always liable to become thus limited to a single species, or even individual, if people have occasion to think and speak of that individual or species much oftener than of any thing else which is contained in the genus. Thus by cattle, a stage-coachman will understand horses; beasts, in the language of agriculturists, stands for oxen; and birds, with some sportsmen, for partridges only. The law of language which operates in these trivial instances is the very same in conformity to which the terms Θεός, Deus, and God, were adopted from Polytheism by Christianity, to express the single object of its own adoration. Almost all the terminology of the Christian Church is made up of words originally used in a much more general acceptation:Ecclesia, Assembly;Bishop, Episcopus, Overseer;Priest, Presbyter, Elder;Deacon, Diaconus, Administrator;Sacrament, a vow of allegiance;Evangelium, good tidings; and some words, asMinister, are still used both in the general and in the limited sense. It would be interesting to trace the progress by whichauthorcame, in its most familiar sense, to signify a writer, and ποίητης, or maker, a poet.Of the incorporation into the meaning of a term, of circumstances accidentally connected with it at some particular period, as in the case of Pagan, instances might easily be multiplied. Physician (φυσίκος, or naturalist) became, in England, synonymous with a healer of diseases, because until a comparatively late period medical practitioners were the only naturalists.Clerc, or clericus, a scholar, came to signify an ecclesiastic, because the clergy were for many centuries the only scholars.Of all ideas, however, the most liable to cling by association to any thing with which they have ever been connected by proximity, are those of our pleasures and pains, or of the things which we habitually contemplate as sources of our pleasures or pains. The additional connotation, therefore, which a word soonest and most readily takes on, is that of agreeableness or painfulness, in their various kinds and degrees; of being a good or bad thing; desirable or to be avoided; an object of hatred, of dread, contempt, admiration, hope, or love. Accordingly there is hardly a single name, expressive of any moral or social fact calculated to call forth strong affections either of a favorable or of a hostile nature, which does not carry with it decidedly and irresistibly a connotation of those strong affections, or, at the[pg 487]least, of approbation or censure; insomuch that to employ those names in conjunction with others by which the contrary sentiments were expressed, would produce the effect of a paradox, or even a contradiction in terms. The baneful influence of a connotation thus acquired, on the prevailing habits of thought, especially in morals and politics, has been well pointed out on many occasions by Bentham. It gives rise to the fallacy of“question-begging names.”The very property which we are inquiring whether a thing possesses or not, has become so associated with the name of the thing as to be part of its meaning, insomuch that by merely uttering the name we assume the point which was to be made out; one of the most frequent sources of apparently self-evident propositions.Without any further multiplication of examples to illustrate the changes which usage is continually making in the signification of terms, I shall add, as a practical rule, that the logician, not being able to prevent such transformations, should submit to them with a good grace when they are irrevocably effected, and if a definition is necessary, define the word according to its new meaning; retaining the former as a second signification, if it is needed, and if there is any chance of being able to preserve it either in the language of philosophy or in common use. Logicians can notmakethe meaning of any but scientific terms; that of all other words is made by the collective human race. But logicians can ascertain clearly what it is which, working obscurely, has guided the general mind to a particular employment of a name; and when they have found this, they can clothe it in such distinct and permanent terms, that mankind shall see the meaning which before they only felt, and shall not suffer it to be afterward forgotten or misapprehended.Chapter VI.The Principles Of A Philosophical Language Further Considered.§ 1. We have, thus far, considered only one of the requisites of a language adapted for the investigation of truth; that its terms shall each of them convey a determinate and unmistakable meaning. There are, however, as we have already remarked, other requisites; some of them important only in the second degree, but one which is fundamental, and barely yields in point of importance, if it yields at all, to the quality which we have already discussed at so much length. That the language may be fitted for its purposes, not only should every word perfectly express its meaning, but there should be no important meaning without its word. Whatever we have occasion to think of often, and for scientific purposes, ought to have a name appropriated to it.This requisite of philosophical language may be considered under three different heads; that number of separate conditions being involved in it.§ 2. First, there ought to be all such names, as are needful for making such a record of individual observations that the words of the record shall exactly show what fact it is which has been observed. In other words, there should be an accurate Descriptive Terminology.The only things which we can observe directly being our own sensations, or other feelings, a complete descriptive language would be one in which there should be a name for every variety of elementary sensation or feeling.[pg 488]Combinations of sensations or feelings may always be described, if we have a name for each of the elementary feelings which compose them; but brevity of description, and clearness (which often depends very much on brevity), are greatly promoted by giving distinctive names not to the elements alone, but also to all combinations which are of frequent recurrence. On this occasion I can not do better than quote from Dr. Whewell222some of the excellent remarks which he has made on this important branch of our subject.“The meaning of [descriptive] technical terms can be fixed in the first instance only by convention, and can be made intelligible only by presenting to the senses that which the terms are to signify. The knowledge of a color by its name can only be taught through the eye. No description can convey to a hearer what we mean byapple-greenorFrench gray. It might, perhaps, be supposed that, in the first example, the termapple, referring to so familiar an object, sufficiently suggests the color intended. But it may easily be seen that this is not true; for apples are of many different hues of green, and it is only by a conventional selection that we can appropriate the term to one special shade. When this appropriation is once made, the term refers to the sensation, and not to the parts of the term; for these enter into the compound merely as a help to the memory, whether the suggestion be a natural connection as in‘apple-green,’or a casual one as in‘French gray.’In order to derive due advantage from technical terms of the kind, they must be associatedimmediatelywith the perception to which they belong; and not connected with it through the vague usages of common language. The memory must retain the sensation; and the technical word must be understood as directly as the most familiar word, and more distinctly. When we find such terms astin-whiteorpinchbeck-brown, the metallic color so denoted ought to start up in our memory without delay or search.“This, which it is most important to recollect with respect to the simpler properties of bodies, as color and form, is no less true with respect to more compound notions. In all cases the term is fixed to a peculiar meaning by convention; and the student, in order to use the word, must be completely familiar with the convention, so that he has no need to frame conjectures from the word itself. Such conjectures would always be insecure, and often erroneous. Thus the termpapilionaceousapplied to a flower is employed to indicate, not only a resemblance to a butterfly, but a resemblance arising from five petals of a certain-peculiar shape and arrangement; and even if the resemblance were much stronger than it is in such cases, yet, if it were produced in a different way, as, for example, by one petal, or two only, instead of a‘standard,’two‘wings,’and a‘keel’consisting of two parts more or less united into one, we should be no longer justified in speaking of it as a‘papilionaceous’flower.”When, however, the thing named is, as in this last case, a combination of simple sensations, it is not necessary, in order to learn the meaning of the word, that the student should refer back to the sensations themselves; it may be communicated to him through the medium of other words; the terms, in short, may be defined. But the names of elementary sensations, or elementary feelings of any sort, can not be defined; nor is there any mode of making their signification known but by making the learner experience the sensation, or referring him, through some known mark, to his[pg 489]remembrance of having experienced it before. Hence it is only the impressions on the outward senses, or those inward feelings which are connected in a very obvious and uniform manner with outward objects, that are really susceptible of an exact descriptive language. The countless variety of sensations which arise, for instance, from disease, or from peculiar physiological states, it would be in vain to attempt to name; for as no one can judge whether the sensation I have is the same with his, the name can not have, to us two, real community of meaning. The same may be said, to a considerable extent, of purely mental feelings. But in some of the sciences which are conversant with external objects, it is scarcely possible to surpass the perfection to which this quality of a philosophical language has been carried.“The formation223of an exact and extensive descriptive language for botany has been executed with a degree of skill and felicity, which, before it was attained, could hardly have been dreamed of as attainable. Every part of a plant has been named; and the form of every part, even the most minute, has had a large assemblage of descriptive terms appropriated to it, by means of which the botanist can convey and receive knowledge of form and structure, as exactly as if each minute part were presented to him vastly magnified. This acquisition was part of the Linnæan reform....‘Tournefort,’says Decandolle,‘appears to have been the first who really perceived the utility of fixing the sense of terms in such a way as always to employ the same word in the same sense, and always to express the same idea by the same words; but it was Linnæus who really created and fixed this botanical language, and this is his fairest claim to glory, for by this fixation of language he has shed clearness and precision over all parts of the science.’“It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the terms of botany. The fundamental ones have been gradually introduced, as the parts of plants were more carefully and minutely examined. Thus the flower was necessarily distinguished into thecalyx, thecorolla, thestamens, and thepistils; the sections of the corolla were termedpetalsby Columna; those of the calyx were calledsepalsby Necker. Sometimes terms of greater generality were devised; asperianth, to include the calyx and corolla, whether one or both of these were present;pericarp, for the part inclosing the grain, of whatever kind it be, fruit, nut, pod, etc. And it may easily be imagined, that descriptive terms may, by definition and combination, become very numerous and distinct. Thus leaves may be calledpinnatifid,pinnatipartite,pinnatisect,pinnatilobate,palmatifid,palmatipartite, etc., and each of these words designates different combinations of the modes and extent of the divisions of the leaf with the divisions of its outline. In some cases, arbitrary numerical relations are introduced into the definition: thus, a leaf is calledbilobate, when it is divided into two parts by a notch; but if the notch go to the middle of its length, it isbifid; if it go near the base of the leaf, it isbipartite; if to the base, it isbisect. Thus, too, a pod of a cruciferous plant is asiliqua, if it is four times as long as it is broad, but if it be shorter than this it is asilicula. Such terms being established, the form of the very complex leaf or frond of a fern (Hymenophyllum Wilsoni) is exactly conveyed by the following phrase:‘fronds rigid pinnate, pinnæ recurved subunilateral, pinnatifid, the segments linear undivided or bifid, spinuloso-serrate.’[pg 490]“Other characters, as well as form, are conveyed with the like precision: Color by means of a classified scale of colors.... This was done with most precision by Werner, and his scale of colors is still the most usual standard of naturalists. Werner also introduced a more exact terminology with regard to other characters which are important in mineralogy, as lustre, hardness. But Mohs improved upon this step by giving a numerical scale of hardness, in which talc is 1, gypsum 2, calc spar 3, and so on.... Some properties, as specific gravity, by their definition give at once a numerical measure; and others, as crystalline form, require a very considerable array of mathematical calculation and reasoning, to point out their relations and gradations.”§ 3. Thus far of Descriptive Terminology, or of the language requisite for placing on record our observation of individual instances. But when we proceed from this to Induction, or rather to that comparison of observed instances which is the preparatory step toward it, we stand in need of an additional and a different sort of general names.Whenever, for purposes of Induction, we find it necessary to introduce (in Dr. Whewell’s phraseology) some new general conception; that is, whenever the comparison of a set of phenomena leads to the recognition in them of some common circumstance, which, our attention not having been directed to it on any former occasion, is to us a new phenomenon; it is of importance that this new conception, or this new result of abstraction, should have a name appropriated to it; especially if the circumstance it involves be one which leads to many consequences, or which is likely to be found also in other classes of phenomena. No doubt, in most cases of the kind, the meaning might be conveyed by joining together several words already in use. But when a thing has to be often spoken of, there are more reasons than the saving of time and space, for speaking of it in the most concise manner possible. What darkness would be spread over geometrical demonstrations, if wherever the wordcircleis used, the definition of a circle were inserted instead of it. In mathematics and its applications, where the nature of the processes demands that the attention should be strongly concentrated, but does not require that it should be widely diffused, the importance of concentration also in the expressions has always been duly felt; and a mathematician no sooner finds that he shall often have occasion to speak of the same two things together, than he at once creates a term to express them whenever combined: just as, in his algebraical operations, he substitutes for (am+bn) p/q, or fora/b+b/c+c/d+ etc., the single letter P, Q, or S; not solely to shorten his symbolical expressions, but to simplify the purely intellectual part of his operations, by enabling the mind to give its exclusive attention to the relation between the quantity S and the other quantities which enter into the equation, without being distracted by thinking unnecessarily of the parts of which S is itself composed.But there is another reason, in addition to that of promoting perspicuity, for giving a brief and compact name to each of the more considerable results of abstraction which are obtained in the course of our intellectual phenomena. By naming them, we fix our attention upon them; we keep them more constantly before the mind. The names are remembered, and being remembered, suggest their definition; while if instead of specific[pg 491]and characteristic names, the meaning had been expressed by putting together a number of other names, that particular combination of words already in common use for other purposes would have had nothing to make itself remembered by. If we want to render a particular combination of ideas permanent in the mind, there is nothing which clinches it like a name specially devoted to express it. If mathematicians had been obliged to speak of“that to which a quantity, in increasing or diminishing, is always approaching nearer, so that the difference becomes less than any assignable quantity, but to which it never becomes exactly equal,”instead of expressing all this by the simple phrase,“the limit of a quantity,”we should probably have long remained without most of the important truths which have been discovered by means of the relation between quantities of various kinds and their limits. If instead of speaking ofmomentum, it had been necessary to say,“the product of the number of units of velocity in the velocity by the number of units of mass in the mass,”many of the dynamical truths now apprehended by means of this complex idea would probably have escaped notice, for want of recalling the idea itself with sufficient readiness and familiarity. And on subjects less remote from the topics of popular discussion, whoever wishes to draw attention to some new or unfamiliar distinction among things, will find no way so sure as to invent or select suitable names for the express purpose of marking it.A volume devoted to explaining what the writer means by civilization, does not raise so vivid a conception of it as the single expression, that Civilization is a different thing from Cultivation; the compactness of that brief designation for the contrasted quality being an equivalent for a long discussion. So, if we would impress forcibly upon the understanding and memory the distinction between the two different conceptions of a representative government, we can not more effectually do so than by saying that Delegation is not Representation. Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind, or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors, until aptly-selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fast.§ 4. Of the three essential parts of a philosophical language, we have now mentioned two: a terminology suited for describing with precision the individual facts observed; and a name for every common property of any importance or interest, which we detect by comparing those facts; including (as the concretes corresponding to those abstract terms) names for the classes which we artificially construct in virtue of those properties, or as many of them, at least, as we have frequent occasion to predicate any thing of.But there is a sort of classes, for the recognition of which no such elaborate process is necessary; because each of them is marked out from all others not by some one property, the detection of which may depend on a difficult act of abstraction, but by its properties generally. I mean, the Kinds of things, in the sense which, in this treatise, has been specially attached to that term. By a Kind, it will be remembered, we mean one of those classes which are distinguished from all others not by one or a few definite properties, but by an unknown multitude of them; the combination of properties on which the class is grounded, being a mere index to an indefinite number of other distinctive attributes. The class horse is a Kind, because the things which agree in possessing the characters by which[pg 492]we recognize a horse, agree in a great number of other properties, as we know, and, it can not be doubted, in many more than we know. Animal, again, is a Kind, because no definition that could be given of the name animal could either exhaust the properties common to all animals, or supply premises from which the remainder of those properties could be inferred. But a combination of properties which does not give evidence of the existence of any other independent peculiarities, does not constitute a Kind. White horse, therefore, is not a Kind; because horses which agree in whiteness, do not agree in any thing else, except the qualities common to all horses, and whatever may be the causes or effects of that particular color.On the principle that there should be a name for every thing which we have frequent occasion to make assertions about, there ought evidently to be a name for every Kind; for as it is the very meaning of a Kind that the individuals composing it have an indefinite multitude of properties in common, it follows that, if not with our present knowledge, yet with that which we may hereafter acquire, the Kind is a subject to which there will have to be applied many predicates. The third component element of a philosophical language, therefore, is that there shall be a name for every Kind. In other words, there must not only be a terminology, but also a nomenclature.The words Nomenclature and Terminology are employed by most authors almost indiscriminately; Dr. Whewell being, as far as I am aware, the first writer who has regularly assigned to the two words different meanings. The distinction, however, which he has drawn between them being real and important, his example is likely to be followed; and (as is apt to be the case when such innovations in language are felicitously made) a vague sense of the distinction is found to have influenced the employment of the terms in common practice, before the expediency had been pointed out of discriminating them philosophically. Every one would say that the reform effected by Lavoisier and Guyton-Morveau in the language of chemistry consisted in the introduction of a new nomenclature, not of a new terminology. Linear, lanceolate, oval, or oblong, serrated, dentate, or crenate leaves, are expressions forming part of the terminology of botany, while the names“Viola odorata,”and“Ulex Europæus,”belong to its nomenclature.A nomenclature may be defined, the collection of the names of all the Kinds with which any branch of knowledge is conversant; or more properly, of all the lowest Kinds, orinfirmæ species—those which may be subdivided indeed, but not into Kinds, and which generally accord with what in natural history are termed simply species. Science possesses two splendid examples of a systematic nomenclature; that of plants and animals, constructed by Linnæus and his successors, and that of chemistry, which we owe to the illustrious group of chemists who flourished in France toward the close of the eighteenth century. In these two departments, not only has every known species, or lowest Kind, a name assigned to it, but when new lowest Kinds are discovered, names are at once given to them on a uniform principle. In other sciences the nomenclature is not at present constructed on any system, either because the species to be named are not numerous enough to require one (as in geometry, for example), or because no one has yet suggested a suitable principle for such a system, as in mineralogy; in which the want of a scientifically constructed nomenclature is now the principal cause which retards the progress of the science.[pg 493]§ 5. A word which carries on its face that it belongs to a nomenclature, seems at first sight to differ from other concrete general names in this—that its meaning does not reside in its connotation, in the attributes implied in it, but in its denotation, that is, in the particular group of things which it is appointed to designate; and can not, therefore, be unfolded by means of a definition, but must be made known in another way. This opinion, however, appears to me erroneous. Words belonging to a nomenclature differ, I conceive, from other words mainly in this, that besides the ordinary connotation, they have a peculiar one of their own: besides connoting certain attributes, they also connote that those attributes are distinctive of a Kind. The term“peroxide of iron,”for example, belonging by its form to the systematic nomenclature of chemistry, bears on its face that it is the name of a peculiar Kind of substance. It moreover connotes, like the name of any other class, some portion of the properties common to the class; in this instance the property of being a compound of iron and the largest dose of oxygen with which iron will combine. These two things, the fact of being such a compound, and the fact of being a Kind, constitute the connotation of the name peroxide of iron. When we say of the substance before us, that it is the peroxide of iron, we thereby assert, first, that it is a compound of iron and a maximum of oxygen, and next, that the substance so composed is a peculiar Kind of substance.Now, this second part of the connotation of any word belonging to a nomenclature is as essential a portion of its meaning as the first part, while the definition only declares the first; and hence the appearance that the signification of such terms can not be conveyed by a definition: which appearance, however, is fallacious. The name Viola odorata denotes a Kind, of which a certain number of characters, sufficient to distinguish it, are enunciated in botanical works. This enumeration of characters is surely, as in other cases, a definition of the name. No, say some, it is not a definition, for the name Viola odorata does not mean those characters; it means that particular group of plants, and the characters are selected from among a much greater number, merely as marks by which to recognize the group. But to this I reply, that the name does not mean that group, for it would be applied to that group no longer than while the group is believed to be aninfima species; if it were to be discovered that several distinct Kinds have been confounded under this one name, no one would any longer apply the name Viola odorata to the whole of the group, but would apply it, if retained at all, to one only of the Kinds retained therein. What is imperative, therefore, is not that the name shall denote one particular collection of objects, but that it shall denote a Kind, and a lowest Kind. The form of the name declares that, happen what will, it is to denote aninfima species; and that, therefore, the properties which it connotes, and which are expressed in the definition, are to be connoted by it no longer than while we continue to believe that those properties, when found together, indicate a Kind, and that the whole of them are found in no more than one Kind.With the addition of this peculiar connotation, implied in the form of every word which belongs to a systematic nomenclature; the set of characters which is employed to discriminate each Kind from all other Kinds (and which is a real definition) constitutes as completely as in any other case the whole meaning of the term. It is no objection to say that (as is often the case in natural history) the set of characters may be changed, and another substituted as being better suited for the purpose[pg 494]of distinction, while the word, still continuing to denote the same group or things, is not considered to have changed its meaning. For this is no more than may happen in the case of any other general name: we may, in reforming its connotation, leave its denotation untouched; and it is generally desirable to do so. The connotation, however, is not the less for this the real meaning, for we at once apply the name wherever the characters set down in the definition are found; and that which exclusively guides us in applying the term, must constitute its signification. If we find, contrary to our previous belief, that the characters are not peculiar to one species, we cease to use the term co-extensively with the characters; but then it is because the other portion of the connotation fails; the condition that the class must be a Kind. The connotation, therefore, is still the meaning; the set of descriptive characters is a true definition; and the meaning is unfolded, not indeed (as in other cases) by the definition alone, but by the definition and the form of the word taken together.§ 6. We have now analyzed what is implied in the two principal requisites of a philosophical language; first, precision, or definiteness; and, secondly, completeness. Any further remarks on the mode of constructing a nomenclature must be deferred until we treat of Classification; the mode of naming the Kinds of things being necessarily subordinate to the mode of arranging those Kinds into larger classes. With respect to the minor requisites of terminology, some of them are well stated and illustrated in the“Aphorisms concerning the Language of Science,”included in Dr. Whewell’sPhilosophy of the Inductive Sciences. These, as being of secondary importance in the peculiar point of view of Logic, I shall not further refer to, but shall confine my observations to one more quality, which, next to the two already treated of, appears to be the most valuable which the language of science can possess. Of this quality a general notion may be conveyed by the following aphorism:Whenever the nature of the subject permits our reasoning processes to be, without danger, carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while, in the contrary case, it should be so constructed that there shall be the greatest possible obstacles to a merely mechanical use of it.I am aware that this maxim requires much explanation, which I shall at once proceed to give. At first, as to what is meant by using a language mechanically. The complete or extreme case of the mechanical use of language, is when it is used without any consciousness of a meaning, and with only the consciousness of using certain visible or audible marks in conformity to technical rules previously laid down. This extreme case is nowhere realized except in the figures of arithmetic, and still more the symbols of algebra, a language unique in its kind, and approaching as nearly to perfection, for the purposes to which it is destined, as can, perhaps, be said of any creation of the human mind. Its perfection consists in the completeness of its adaptation to a purely mechanical use. The symbols are mere counters, without even the semblance of a meaning apart from the convention which is renewed each time they are employed, and which is altered at each renewal, the same symbolaorxbeing used on different occasions to represent things which (except that, like all things, they are susceptible of being numbered) have no property in common. There is nothing, therefore, to distract the mind from the set of mechanical operations which are to be performed upon the symbols, such as squaring both sides[pg 495]of the equation, multiplying or dividing them by the same or by equivalent symbols, and so forth. Each of these operations, it is true, corresponds to a syllogism; represents one step of a ratiocination relating not to the symbols, but to the things signified by them. But as it has been found practicable to frame a technical form, by conforming to which we can make sure of finding the conclusion of the ratiocination, our end can be completely attained without our ever thinking of any thing but the symbols. Being thus intended to work merely as mechanism, they have the qualities which mechanism ought to have. They are of the least possible bulk, so that they take up scarcely any room, and waste no time in their manipulation; they are compact, and fit so closely together that the eye can take in the whole at once of almost every operation which they are employed to perform.These admirable properties of the symbolical language of mathematics have made so strong an impression on the minds of many thinkers, as to have led them to consider the symbolical language in question as the ideal type of philosophical language generally; to think that names in general, or (as they are fond of calling them) signs, are fitted for the purposes of thought in proportion as they can be made to approximate to the compactness, the entire unmeaningness, and the capability of being used as counters without a thought of what they represent, which are characteristic of theaandb, thexandy, of algebra. This notion has led to sanguine views of the acceleration of the progress of science by means which, I conceive, can not possibly conduce to that end, and forms part of that exaggerated estimate of the influence of signs, which has contributed in no small degree to prevent the real laws of our intellectual operations from being rightly understood.In the first place, a set of signs by which we reason without consciousness of their meaning, can be serviceable, at most, only in our deductive operations. In our direct inductions we can not for a moment dispense with a distinct mental image of the phenomena, since the whole operation turns on a perception of the particulars in which those phenomena agree and differ. But, further, this reasoning by counters is only suitable to a very limited portion even of our deductive processes. In our reasonings respecting numbers, the only general principles which we ever have occasion to introduce are these, Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and The sums or differences of equal things are equal; with their various corollaries. Not only can no hesitation ever arise respecting the applicability of these principles, since they are true of all magnitudes whatever; but every possible application of which they are susceptible, may be reduced to a technical rule; and such, in fact, the rules of the calculus are. But if the symbols represent any other things than mere numbers, let us say even straight or curve lines, we have then to apply theorems of geometry not true of all lines without exception, and to select those which are true of the lines we are reasoning about. And how can we do this unless we keep completely in mind what particular lines these are? Since additional geometrical truths may be introduced into the ratiocination in any stage of its progress, we can not suffer ourselves, during even the smallest part of it, to use the names mechanically (as we use algebraical symbols) without an image annexed to them. It is only after ascertaining that the solution of a question concerning lines can be made to depend on a previous question concerning numbers, or, in other words, after the question has been (to speak technically) reduced to an equation, that the unmeaning signs become available, and that the nature of the facts themselves to which the investigation[pg 496]relates can be dismissed from the mind. Up to the establishment of the equation, the language in which mathematicians carry on their reasoning does not differ in character from that employed by close reasoners on any other kind of subject.I do not deny that every correct ratiocination, when thrown into the syllogistic shape, is conclusive from the mere form of the expression, provided none of the terms used be ambiguous; and this is one of the circumstances which have led some writers to think that if all names were so judiciously constructed and so carefully defined as not to admit of any ambiguity, the improvement thus made in language would not only give to the conclusions of every deductive science the same certainty with those of mathematics, but would reduce all reasonings to the application of a technical form, and enable their conclusiveness to be rationally assented to after a merely mechanical process, as is undoubtedly the case in algebra. But, if we except geometry, the conclusions of which are already as certain and exact as they can be made, there is no science but that of number, in which the practical validity of a reasoning can be apparent to any person who has looked only at the reasoning itself. Whoever has assented to what was said in the last Book concerning the case of the Composition of Causes, and the still stronger case of the entire supersession of one set of laws by another, is aware that geometry and algebra are the only sciences of which the propositions are categorically true; the general propositions of all other sciences are true only hypothetically, supposing that no counteracting cause happens to interfere. A conclusion, therefore, however correctly deduced, in point of form, from admitted laws of nature, will have no other than an hypothetical certainty. At every step we must assure ourselves that no other law of nature has superseded, or intermingled its operation with, those which are the premises of the reasoning; and how can this be done by merely looking at the words? We must not only be constantly thinking of the phenomena themselves, but we must be constantly studying them; making ourselves acquainted with the peculiarities of every case to which we attempt to apply our general principles.The algebraic notation, considered as a philosophical language, is perfect in its adaptation to the subjects for which it is commonly employed, namely those of which the investigations have already been reduced to the ascertainment of a relation between numbers. But, admirable as it is for its own purpose, the properties by which it is rendered such are so far from constituting it the ideal model of philosophical language in general, that the more nearly the language of any other branch of science approaches to it, the less fit that language is for its own proper functions. On all other subjects, instead of contrivances to prevent our attention from being distracted by thinking of the meaning of our signs, we ought to wish for contrivances to make it impossible that we should ever lose sight of that meaning even for an instant.With this view, as much meaning as possible should be thrown into the formation of the word itself; the aids of derivation and analogy being made available to keep alive a consciousness of all that is signified by it. In this respect those languages have an immense advantage which form their compounds and derivatives from native roots, like the German, and not from those of a foreign or dead language, as is so much the case with English, French, and Italian; and the best are those which form them according to fixed analogies, corresponding to the relations between the ideas to be expressed. All languages do this more or less, but especially, among modern[pg 497]European languages, the German; while even that is inferior to the Greek, in which the relation between the meaning of a derivative word and that of its primitive is in general clearly marked by its mode of formation, except in the case of words compounded with prepositions, which are often, in both those languages, extremely anomalous.But all that can be done, by the mode of constructing words, to prevent them from degenerating into sounds passing through the mind without any distinct apprehension of what they signify, is far too little for the necessity of the case. Words, however well constructed originally, are always tending, like coins, to have their inscription worn off by passing from hand to hand; and the only possible mode of reviving it is to be ever stamping it afresh, by living in the habitual contemplation of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity with the words that express them. If any one, having possessed himself of the laws of phenomena as recorded in words, whether delivered to him originally by others, or even found out by himself, is content from thenceforth to live among these formulæ, to think exclusively of them, and of applying them to cases as they arise, without keeping up his acquaintance with the realities from which these laws were collected—not only will he continually fail in his practical efforts, because he will apply his formulæ without duly considering whether, in this case and in that, other laws of nature do not modify or supersede them; but the formulæ themselves will progressively lose their meaning to him, and he will cease at last even to be capable of recognizing with certainty whether a case falls within the contemplation of his formula or not. It is, in short, as necessary, on all subjects not mathematical, that the things on which we reason should be conceived by us in the concrete, and“clothed in circumstances,”as it is in algebra that we should keep all individualizing peculiarities sedulously out of view.With this remark we close our observations on the Philosophy of Language.

Chapter V.On The Natural History Of The Variations In The Meaning Of Terms.§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth is, that the connotation of such words is perpetually varying; as might be expected from the manner in which words in common use acquire their connotation. A technical term, invented for purposes of art or science, has, from the first, the connotation given to it by its inventor; but a name which is in every one’s mouth before any one thinks of defining it, derives its connotation only from the circumstances which are habitually brought to mind when it is pronounced. Among these circumstances, the properties common to the things denoted by the name, have naturally a principal place; and would have the sole place, if language were regulated by convention rather than by custom and accident. But besides these common properties, which if they exist arecertainlypresent whenever the name is employed, any other circumstance maycasuallybe found along with it, so frequently as to become associated with it in the same manner, and as strongly, as the common properties themselves. In proportion as this association forms itself, people give up using the name in cases in which those casual circumstances do not exist. They prefer using some other name, or the same name with some adjunct, rather than employ an expression which will call up an idea they do not want to excite. The circumstance originally casual, thus becomes regularly a part of the connotation of the word.It is this continual incorporation of circumstances originally accidental, into the permanent signification of words, which is the cause that there are so few exact synonyms. It is this also which renders the dictionary meaning of a word, by universal remark so imperfect an exponent of its real meaning. The dictionary meaning is marked out in a broad, blunt way, and probably includes all that was originally necessary for the correct employment of the term; but in process of time so many collateral associations adhere to words, that whoever should attempt to use them with no other guide than the dictionary, would confound a thousand nice distinctions and subtle shades of meaning which dictionaries take no account of; as we notice in the use of a language in conversation or writing by a foreigner not thoroughly master of it. The history of a word, by showing the causes which determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment than any definition; for definitions can only show its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its history may show the law by which the succession was produced. The wordgentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. From this it came by degrees to connote all such qualities or adventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of that rank. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar acceptations it means any one who lives without labor, in another without manual[pg 481]labor, and in its more elevated signification it has in every age signified the conduct, character, habits, and outward appearance, in whomsoever found, which, according to the ideas of that age, belonged or were expected to belong to persons born and educated in a high social position.It continually happens that of two words, whose dictionary meanings are either the same or very slightly different, one will be the proper word to use in one set of circumstances, another in another, without its being possible to show how the custom of so employing them originally grew up. The accident that one of the words was used and not the other on a particular occasion or in a particular social circle, will be sufficient to produce so strong an association between the word and some specialty of circumstances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any other case, and the specialty becomes part of its signification. The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there.An instance in point is the remarkable change which, in the English language at least, has taken place in the signification of the wordloyalty. That word originally meant in English, as it still means in the language from whence it came, fair, open dealing, and fidelity to engagements; in that sense the quality it expressed was part of the ideal chivalrous or knightly character. By what process, in England, the term became restricted to the single case of fidelity to the throne, I am not sufficiently versed in the history of courtly language to be able to pronounce. The interval between aloyal chevalierand a loyal subject is certainly great. I can only suppose that the word was, at some period, the favorite term at court to express fidelity to the oath of allegiance; until at length those who wished to speak of any other, and as it was probably deemed, inferior sort of fidelity, either did not venture to use so dignified a term, or found it convenient to employ some other in order to avoid being misunderstood.§ 2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, at first casually incorporated into the connotation of a word which originally had no reference to it, in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and becomes not merely a part of the connotation, but the whole of it. This is exemplified in the word pagan,paganus; which originally, as its etymology imports, was equivalent tovillager; the inhabitant of apagus, or village. At a particular era in the extension of Christianity over the Roman empire, the adherents of the old religion, and the villagers or country people, were nearly the same body of individuals, the inhabitants of the towns having been earliest converted; as in our own day, and at all times, the greater activity of social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients of new opinions and modes, while old habits and prejudices linger longest among the country people; not to mention that the towns were more immediately under the direct influence of the Government, which at that time had embraced Christianity. From this casual coincidence, the wordpaganuscarried with it, and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea of a worshiper of the ancient divinities; until at length it suggested that idea so forcibly that people who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided using the word. But whenpaganushad come to connote heathenism, the very unimportant circumstance, with reference to that fact, of the place of residence, was soon disregarded in the employment of the word. As there was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting heathens who lived in the country, there was no need for a separate word to[pg 482]denote them; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to mean that exclusively.A case still more familiar to most readers is that of the wordvillainorvillein. This term, as every body knows, had in the Middle Ages a connotation as strictly defined as a word could have, being the proper legal designation for those persons who were the subjects of the less onerous forms of feudal bondage. The scorn of the semi-barbarous military aristocracy for these their abject dependants, rendered the act of likening any person to this class of people a mark of the greatest contumely; the same scorn led them to ascribe to the same people all manner of hateful qualities, which doubtless also, in the degrading situation in which they were held, were often not unjustly imputed to them. These circumstances combined to attach to the term villain ideas of crime and guilt, in so forcible a manner that the application of the epithet even to those to whom it legally belonged became an affront, and was abstained from whenever no affront was intended. From that time guilt was part of the connotation; and soon became the whole of it, since mankind were not prompted by any urgent motive to continue making a distinction in their language between bad men of servile station and bad men of any other rank in life.These and similar instances in which the original signification of a term is totally lost—another and an entirely distinct meaning being first ingrafted upon the former, and finally substituted for it—afford examples of the double movement which is always taking place in language: two counter-movements, one of Generalization, by which words are perpetually losing portions of their connotation, and becoming of less meaning and more general acceptation; the other of Specialization, by which other, or even these same words, are continually taking on fresh connotation; acquiring additional meaning by being restricted in their employment to a part only of the occasions on which they might properly be used before. This double movement is of sufficient importance in the natural history of language (to which natural history the artificial modifications ought always to have some degree of reference), to justify our dwelling a little longer on the nature of the twofold phenomenon, and the causes to which it owes its existence.§ 3. To begin with the movement of generalization. It might seem unnecessary to dwell on the changes in the meaning of names which take place merely from their being used ignorantly, by persons who, not having properly mastered the received connotation of a word, apply it in a looser and wider sense than belongs to it. This, however, is a real source of alterations in the language; for when a word, from being often employed in cases where one of the qualities which it connotes does not exist, ceases to suggest that quality with certainty, then even those who are under no mistake as to the proper meaning of the word, prefer expressing that meaning in some other way, and leave the original word to its fate. The word ’Squire, as standing for an owner of a landed estate; Parson, as denoting not the rector of the parish, but clergymen in general; Artist, to denote only a painter or sculptor; are cases in point. Such cases give a clear insight into the process of the degeneration of languages in periods of history when literary culture was suspended; and we are now in danger of experiencing a similar evil through the superficial extension of the same culture. So many persons without any thing deserving the name of education have become writers by profession, that written language may almost[pg 483]be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verbtranspireformerly conveyed very expressively its correct meaning, viz., tobecome knownthrough unnoticed channels—to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapor or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonym ofto happen:“the events which havetranspiredin the Crimea,”meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the dispatches of noblemen and viceroys; and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense. In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown to genuine English. The use of“aggravating”for“provoking,”in my boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers, and into many books; and when the word is used in its proper sense, as when writers on criminal law speak of aggravating and extenuating circumstances, their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood. It is a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing one’s self clearly with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the wordaloneas an adverb,onlynot being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ignorance. A man will say“to which I am not alone bound by honor but also by law,”unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he isnot alonebound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly, if any one said,“I am not alone responsible for this,”he was understood to mean (what alone his words mean in correct English), that he is not the sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be confused between that and two other meanings: that he is notonly responsiblebut something more; or that he is responsiblenot only for thisbut for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson’s Œnone could not say,“I will not die alone,”lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die but do something else.The blunder of writingpredicateforpredicthas become so widely diffused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical term“to eliminate”is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are acquainted either with the proper use of the word or with its etymology know that to eliminate a thing is to thrust it out: but those who know nothing about it, except that it is a fine-looking phrase, use it in a sense precisely the reverse, to denote, not turning any thing out, but bringing it in. They talk ofeliminatingsome truth, or other useful result, from a mass of details.220A similar permanent deterioration in the language is[pg 484]in danger of being produced by the blunders of translators. The writers of telegrams, and the foreign correspondents of newspapers, have gone on so long translatingdemanderby“to demand,”without a suspicion that it means only to ask, that (the context generally showing that nothing else is meant) English readers are gradually associating the English word demand with simple asking, thus leaving the language without a term to express a demand in its proper sense. In like manner,“transaction,”the French word for a compromise, is translated into the English word transaction; while, curiously enough, the inverse change is taking place in France, where the word“compromis”has lately begun to be used for expressing the same idea. If this continues, the two countries will have exchanged phrases.Independently, however, of the generalization of names through their ignorant misuse, there is a tendency in the same direction consistently with a perfect knowledge of their meaning; arising from the fact, that the number of things known to us, and of which we feel a desire to speak, multiply faster than the names for them. Except on subjects for which there has been constructed a scientific terminology, with which unscientific persons do not meddle, great difficulty is generally found in bringing a new name into use; and independently of that difficulty, it is natural to prefer giving to a new object a name which at least expresses its resemblance to something already known, since by predicating of it a name entirely new we at first convey no information. In this manner the name of a species often becomes the name of a genus; assalt, for example, oroil; the former of which words originally denoted only the muriate of soda, the latter, as its etymology indicates, only olive-oil; but which now denote large and diversified classes of substances resembling these in some of their qualities, and connote only those common qualities, instead of the whole of the distinctive properties of olive-oil and sea-salt. The wordsglassandsoapare used by modern chemists in a similar manner, to denote genera of which the substances vulgarly so called are single species. And it often happens, as in those instances, that the term keeps its special signification in addition to its more general one, and becomes ambiguous, that is, two names instead of one.These changes, by which words in ordinary use become more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take place in a still greater degree with the words which express the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, travelers, and in general those who speak or write concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are not familiarly acquainted, are the great agents in this modification of language. The vocabulary of all except unusually instructed as well as thinking persons, is, on such subjects, eminently scanty. They have a certain small set of words to which they are accustomed, and which they employ to express phenomena the most heterogeneous, because they have never sufficiently analyzed the facts to which those words correspond in their own country, to have attached perfectly definite ideas to the words. The first English conquerors of Bengal, for example, carried with them the phraselanded proprietorinto a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of[pg 485]things; to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right, from another because he had not an absolute right they took away all right, drove whole classes of people to ruin and despair, filled the country with banditti, created a feeling that nothing was secure, and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization of society which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders. Yet the usage of persons capable of so gross a misapprehension determines the meaning of language; and the words they thus misuse grow in generality, until the instructed are obliged to acquiesce; and to employ those words (first freeing them from vagueness by giving them a definite connotation) as generic terms, subdividing the genera into species.§ 4. While the more rapid growth of ideas than of names thus creates a perpetual necessity for making the same names serve, even if imperfectly, on a greater number of occasions; a counter-operation is going on, by which names become on the contrary restricted to fewer occasions, by taking on, as it were, additional connotation, from circumstances not originally included in the meaning, but which have become connected with it in the mind by some accidental cause. We have seen above, in the wordspaganandvillain, remarkable examples of the specialization of the meaning of words from casual associations, as well as of the generalization of it in a new direction, which often follows.Similar specializations are of frequent occurrence in the history even of scientific nomenclature.“It is by no means uncommon,”says Dr. Paris, in hisPharmacologia,221“to find a word which is used to express general characters subsequently become the name of a specific substance in which such characters are predominant; and we shall find that some important anomalies in nomenclature may be thus explained. The term Αρσενίκον, from which the word Arsenic is derived, was an ancient epithet applied to those natural substances which possessed strong and acrimonious properties; and as the poisonous quality of arsenic was found to be remarkably powerful, the term was especially applied to Orpiment, the form in which this metal most usually occurred. So the termVerbena(quasiHerbena) originally denoted all those herbs that were held sacred on account of their being employed in the rites of sacrifice, as we learn from the poets; but asoneherb was usually adopted upon these occasions, the word Verbena came to denote that particular herbonly, and it is transmitted to us to this day under the same title, viz., Verbena or Vervain, and indeed until lately it enjoyed the medical reputation which its sacred origin conferred upon it, for it was worn suspended around the neck as an amulet.Vitriol, in the original application of the word, denotedanycrystalline body with a certain degree of transparency (vitrum); it is hardly necessary to observe that the term is now appropriated to a particular species: in the same manner, Bark, which is a general term, is applied to expressonegenus, and by way of eminence it has the articleTheprefixed, asThebark; the same observation will apply to the word Opium, which, in its primitive sense, signifiesanyjuice (ὀπὸς,Succus), while it now only denotesonespecies, viz., that of the poppy. So, again,Elateriumwas used by Hippocrates to signify various internal applications, especially purgatives, of a violent and drastic nature (from the word ἐλαύνω,agito,moveo,stimulo), but by succeeding authors it was exclusively applied to denote the active matter which subsides[pg 486]from the juice of the wild cucumber. The wordFecula, again, originally meant to implyanysubstance which was derived by spontaneous subsidence from a liquid (fromfæx, the grounds or settlement ofanyliquor); afterward it was applied to Starch, which is deposited in this manner by agitating the flour of wheat in water; and, lastly, it has been applied to a peculiar vegetable principle, which, like starch, is insoluble in cold, but completely soluble in boiling water, with which it forms a gelatinous solution. This indefinite meaning of the wordfeculahas created numerous mistakes in pharmaceutic chemistry; Elaterium, for instance, is said to befecula, and, in the original sense of the word, it is properly so called, inasmuch as it is procured from a vegetable juice by spontaneous subsidence, but in the limited and modern acceptation of the term it conveys an erroneous idea; for instead of the active principle of the juice residing infecula, it is a peculiar proximate principle,sui generis, to which I have ventured to bestow the name ofElatin. For the same reason, much doubt and obscurity involve the meaning of the wordExtract, because it is appliedgenerallyto any substance obtained by the evaporation of a vegetable solution, andspecificallyto a peculiar proximate principle, possessed of certain characters, by which it is distinguished from every other elementary body.”A generic term is always liable to become thus limited to a single species, or even individual, if people have occasion to think and speak of that individual or species much oftener than of any thing else which is contained in the genus. Thus by cattle, a stage-coachman will understand horses; beasts, in the language of agriculturists, stands for oxen; and birds, with some sportsmen, for partridges only. The law of language which operates in these trivial instances is the very same in conformity to which the terms Θεός, Deus, and God, were adopted from Polytheism by Christianity, to express the single object of its own adoration. Almost all the terminology of the Christian Church is made up of words originally used in a much more general acceptation:Ecclesia, Assembly;Bishop, Episcopus, Overseer;Priest, Presbyter, Elder;Deacon, Diaconus, Administrator;Sacrament, a vow of allegiance;Evangelium, good tidings; and some words, asMinister, are still used both in the general and in the limited sense. It would be interesting to trace the progress by whichauthorcame, in its most familiar sense, to signify a writer, and ποίητης, or maker, a poet.Of the incorporation into the meaning of a term, of circumstances accidentally connected with it at some particular period, as in the case of Pagan, instances might easily be multiplied. Physician (φυσίκος, or naturalist) became, in England, synonymous with a healer of diseases, because until a comparatively late period medical practitioners were the only naturalists.Clerc, or clericus, a scholar, came to signify an ecclesiastic, because the clergy were for many centuries the only scholars.Of all ideas, however, the most liable to cling by association to any thing with which they have ever been connected by proximity, are those of our pleasures and pains, or of the things which we habitually contemplate as sources of our pleasures or pains. The additional connotation, therefore, which a word soonest and most readily takes on, is that of agreeableness or painfulness, in their various kinds and degrees; of being a good or bad thing; desirable or to be avoided; an object of hatred, of dread, contempt, admiration, hope, or love. Accordingly there is hardly a single name, expressive of any moral or social fact calculated to call forth strong affections either of a favorable or of a hostile nature, which does not carry with it decidedly and irresistibly a connotation of those strong affections, or, at the[pg 487]least, of approbation or censure; insomuch that to employ those names in conjunction with others by which the contrary sentiments were expressed, would produce the effect of a paradox, or even a contradiction in terms. The baneful influence of a connotation thus acquired, on the prevailing habits of thought, especially in morals and politics, has been well pointed out on many occasions by Bentham. It gives rise to the fallacy of“question-begging names.”The very property which we are inquiring whether a thing possesses or not, has become so associated with the name of the thing as to be part of its meaning, insomuch that by merely uttering the name we assume the point which was to be made out; one of the most frequent sources of apparently self-evident propositions.Without any further multiplication of examples to illustrate the changes which usage is continually making in the signification of terms, I shall add, as a practical rule, that the logician, not being able to prevent such transformations, should submit to them with a good grace when they are irrevocably effected, and if a definition is necessary, define the word according to its new meaning; retaining the former as a second signification, if it is needed, and if there is any chance of being able to preserve it either in the language of philosophy or in common use. Logicians can notmakethe meaning of any but scientific terms; that of all other words is made by the collective human race. But logicians can ascertain clearly what it is which, working obscurely, has guided the general mind to a particular employment of a name; and when they have found this, they can clothe it in such distinct and permanent terms, that mankind shall see the meaning which before they only felt, and shall not suffer it to be afterward forgotten or misapprehended.

§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth is, that the connotation of such words is perpetually varying; as might be expected from the manner in which words in common use acquire their connotation. A technical term, invented for purposes of art or science, has, from the first, the connotation given to it by its inventor; but a name which is in every one’s mouth before any one thinks of defining it, derives its connotation only from the circumstances which are habitually brought to mind when it is pronounced. Among these circumstances, the properties common to the things denoted by the name, have naturally a principal place; and would have the sole place, if language were regulated by convention rather than by custom and accident. But besides these common properties, which if they exist arecertainlypresent whenever the name is employed, any other circumstance maycasuallybe found along with it, so frequently as to become associated with it in the same manner, and as strongly, as the common properties themselves. In proportion as this association forms itself, people give up using the name in cases in which those casual circumstances do not exist. They prefer using some other name, or the same name with some adjunct, rather than employ an expression which will call up an idea they do not want to excite. The circumstance originally casual, thus becomes regularly a part of the connotation of the word.

It is this continual incorporation of circumstances originally accidental, into the permanent signification of words, which is the cause that there are so few exact synonyms. It is this also which renders the dictionary meaning of a word, by universal remark so imperfect an exponent of its real meaning. The dictionary meaning is marked out in a broad, blunt way, and probably includes all that was originally necessary for the correct employment of the term; but in process of time so many collateral associations adhere to words, that whoever should attempt to use them with no other guide than the dictionary, would confound a thousand nice distinctions and subtle shades of meaning which dictionaries take no account of; as we notice in the use of a language in conversation or writing by a foreigner not thoroughly master of it. The history of a word, by showing the causes which determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment than any definition; for definitions can only show its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its history may show the law by which the succession was produced. The wordgentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. From this it came by degrees to connote all such qualities or adventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of that rank. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar acceptations it means any one who lives without labor, in another without manual[pg 481]labor, and in its more elevated signification it has in every age signified the conduct, character, habits, and outward appearance, in whomsoever found, which, according to the ideas of that age, belonged or were expected to belong to persons born and educated in a high social position.

It continually happens that of two words, whose dictionary meanings are either the same or very slightly different, one will be the proper word to use in one set of circumstances, another in another, without its being possible to show how the custom of so employing them originally grew up. The accident that one of the words was used and not the other on a particular occasion or in a particular social circle, will be sufficient to produce so strong an association between the word and some specialty of circumstances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any other case, and the specialty becomes part of its signification. The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there.

An instance in point is the remarkable change which, in the English language at least, has taken place in the signification of the wordloyalty. That word originally meant in English, as it still means in the language from whence it came, fair, open dealing, and fidelity to engagements; in that sense the quality it expressed was part of the ideal chivalrous or knightly character. By what process, in England, the term became restricted to the single case of fidelity to the throne, I am not sufficiently versed in the history of courtly language to be able to pronounce. The interval between aloyal chevalierand a loyal subject is certainly great. I can only suppose that the word was, at some period, the favorite term at court to express fidelity to the oath of allegiance; until at length those who wished to speak of any other, and as it was probably deemed, inferior sort of fidelity, either did not venture to use so dignified a term, or found it convenient to employ some other in order to avoid being misunderstood.

§ 2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, at first casually incorporated into the connotation of a word which originally had no reference to it, in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and becomes not merely a part of the connotation, but the whole of it. This is exemplified in the word pagan,paganus; which originally, as its etymology imports, was equivalent tovillager; the inhabitant of apagus, or village. At a particular era in the extension of Christianity over the Roman empire, the adherents of the old religion, and the villagers or country people, were nearly the same body of individuals, the inhabitants of the towns having been earliest converted; as in our own day, and at all times, the greater activity of social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients of new opinions and modes, while old habits and prejudices linger longest among the country people; not to mention that the towns were more immediately under the direct influence of the Government, which at that time had embraced Christianity. From this casual coincidence, the wordpaganuscarried with it, and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea of a worshiper of the ancient divinities; until at length it suggested that idea so forcibly that people who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided using the word. But whenpaganushad come to connote heathenism, the very unimportant circumstance, with reference to that fact, of the place of residence, was soon disregarded in the employment of the word. As there was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting heathens who lived in the country, there was no need for a separate word to[pg 482]denote them; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to mean that exclusively.

A case still more familiar to most readers is that of the wordvillainorvillein. This term, as every body knows, had in the Middle Ages a connotation as strictly defined as a word could have, being the proper legal designation for those persons who were the subjects of the less onerous forms of feudal bondage. The scorn of the semi-barbarous military aristocracy for these their abject dependants, rendered the act of likening any person to this class of people a mark of the greatest contumely; the same scorn led them to ascribe to the same people all manner of hateful qualities, which doubtless also, in the degrading situation in which they were held, were often not unjustly imputed to them. These circumstances combined to attach to the term villain ideas of crime and guilt, in so forcible a manner that the application of the epithet even to those to whom it legally belonged became an affront, and was abstained from whenever no affront was intended. From that time guilt was part of the connotation; and soon became the whole of it, since mankind were not prompted by any urgent motive to continue making a distinction in their language between bad men of servile station and bad men of any other rank in life.

These and similar instances in which the original signification of a term is totally lost—another and an entirely distinct meaning being first ingrafted upon the former, and finally substituted for it—afford examples of the double movement which is always taking place in language: two counter-movements, one of Generalization, by which words are perpetually losing portions of their connotation, and becoming of less meaning and more general acceptation; the other of Specialization, by which other, or even these same words, are continually taking on fresh connotation; acquiring additional meaning by being restricted in their employment to a part only of the occasions on which they might properly be used before. This double movement is of sufficient importance in the natural history of language (to which natural history the artificial modifications ought always to have some degree of reference), to justify our dwelling a little longer on the nature of the twofold phenomenon, and the causes to which it owes its existence.

§ 3. To begin with the movement of generalization. It might seem unnecessary to dwell on the changes in the meaning of names which take place merely from their being used ignorantly, by persons who, not having properly mastered the received connotation of a word, apply it in a looser and wider sense than belongs to it. This, however, is a real source of alterations in the language; for when a word, from being often employed in cases where one of the qualities which it connotes does not exist, ceases to suggest that quality with certainty, then even those who are under no mistake as to the proper meaning of the word, prefer expressing that meaning in some other way, and leave the original word to its fate. The word ’Squire, as standing for an owner of a landed estate; Parson, as denoting not the rector of the parish, but clergymen in general; Artist, to denote only a painter or sculptor; are cases in point. Such cases give a clear insight into the process of the degeneration of languages in periods of history when literary culture was suspended; and we are now in danger of experiencing a similar evil through the superficial extension of the same culture. So many persons without any thing deserving the name of education have become writers by profession, that written language may almost[pg 483]be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verbtranspireformerly conveyed very expressively its correct meaning, viz., tobecome knownthrough unnoticed channels—to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapor or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonym ofto happen:“the events which havetranspiredin the Crimea,”meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the dispatches of noblemen and viceroys; and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense. In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown to genuine English. The use of“aggravating”for“provoking,”in my boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers, and into many books; and when the word is used in its proper sense, as when writers on criminal law speak of aggravating and extenuating circumstances, their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood. It is a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing one’s self clearly with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the wordaloneas an adverb,onlynot being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ignorance. A man will say“to which I am not alone bound by honor but also by law,”unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he isnot alonebound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly, if any one said,“I am not alone responsible for this,”he was understood to mean (what alone his words mean in correct English), that he is not the sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be confused between that and two other meanings: that he is notonly responsiblebut something more; or that he is responsiblenot only for thisbut for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson’s Œnone could not say,“I will not die alone,”lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die but do something else.

The blunder of writingpredicateforpredicthas become so widely diffused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical term“to eliminate”is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are acquainted either with the proper use of the word or with its etymology know that to eliminate a thing is to thrust it out: but those who know nothing about it, except that it is a fine-looking phrase, use it in a sense precisely the reverse, to denote, not turning any thing out, but bringing it in. They talk ofeliminatingsome truth, or other useful result, from a mass of details.220A similar permanent deterioration in the language is[pg 484]in danger of being produced by the blunders of translators. The writers of telegrams, and the foreign correspondents of newspapers, have gone on so long translatingdemanderby“to demand,”without a suspicion that it means only to ask, that (the context generally showing that nothing else is meant) English readers are gradually associating the English word demand with simple asking, thus leaving the language without a term to express a demand in its proper sense. In like manner,“transaction,”the French word for a compromise, is translated into the English word transaction; while, curiously enough, the inverse change is taking place in France, where the word“compromis”has lately begun to be used for expressing the same idea. If this continues, the two countries will have exchanged phrases.

Independently, however, of the generalization of names through their ignorant misuse, there is a tendency in the same direction consistently with a perfect knowledge of their meaning; arising from the fact, that the number of things known to us, and of which we feel a desire to speak, multiply faster than the names for them. Except on subjects for which there has been constructed a scientific terminology, with which unscientific persons do not meddle, great difficulty is generally found in bringing a new name into use; and independently of that difficulty, it is natural to prefer giving to a new object a name which at least expresses its resemblance to something already known, since by predicating of it a name entirely new we at first convey no information. In this manner the name of a species often becomes the name of a genus; assalt, for example, oroil; the former of which words originally denoted only the muriate of soda, the latter, as its etymology indicates, only olive-oil; but which now denote large and diversified classes of substances resembling these in some of their qualities, and connote only those common qualities, instead of the whole of the distinctive properties of olive-oil and sea-salt. The wordsglassandsoapare used by modern chemists in a similar manner, to denote genera of which the substances vulgarly so called are single species. And it often happens, as in those instances, that the term keeps its special signification in addition to its more general one, and becomes ambiguous, that is, two names instead of one.

These changes, by which words in ordinary use become more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take place in a still greater degree with the words which express the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, travelers, and in general those who speak or write concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are not familiarly acquainted, are the great agents in this modification of language. The vocabulary of all except unusually instructed as well as thinking persons, is, on such subjects, eminently scanty. They have a certain small set of words to which they are accustomed, and which they employ to express phenomena the most heterogeneous, because they have never sufficiently analyzed the facts to which those words correspond in their own country, to have attached perfectly definite ideas to the words. The first English conquerors of Bengal, for example, carried with them the phraselanded proprietorinto a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of[pg 485]things; to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right, from another because he had not an absolute right they took away all right, drove whole classes of people to ruin and despair, filled the country with banditti, created a feeling that nothing was secure, and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization of society which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders. Yet the usage of persons capable of so gross a misapprehension determines the meaning of language; and the words they thus misuse grow in generality, until the instructed are obliged to acquiesce; and to employ those words (first freeing them from vagueness by giving them a definite connotation) as generic terms, subdividing the genera into species.

§ 4. While the more rapid growth of ideas than of names thus creates a perpetual necessity for making the same names serve, even if imperfectly, on a greater number of occasions; a counter-operation is going on, by which names become on the contrary restricted to fewer occasions, by taking on, as it were, additional connotation, from circumstances not originally included in the meaning, but which have become connected with it in the mind by some accidental cause. We have seen above, in the wordspaganandvillain, remarkable examples of the specialization of the meaning of words from casual associations, as well as of the generalization of it in a new direction, which often follows.

Similar specializations are of frequent occurrence in the history even of scientific nomenclature.“It is by no means uncommon,”says Dr. Paris, in hisPharmacologia,221“to find a word which is used to express general characters subsequently become the name of a specific substance in which such characters are predominant; and we shall find that some important anomalies in nomenclature may be thus explained. The term Αρσενίκον, from which the word Arsenic is derived, was an ancient epithet applied to those natural substances which possessed strong and acrimonious properties; and as the poisonous quality of arsenic was found to be remarkably powerful, the term was especially applied to Orpiment, the form in which this metal most usually occurred. So the termVerbena(quasiHerbena) originally denoted all those herbs that were held sacred on account of their being employed in the rites of sacrifice, as we learn from the poets; but asoneherb was usually adopted upon these occasions, the word Verbena came to denote that particular herbonly, and it is transmitted to us to this day under the same title, viz., Verbena or Vervain, and indeed until lately it enjoyed the medical reputation which its sacred origin conferred upon it, for it was worn suspended around the neck as an amulet.Vitriol, in the original application of the word, denotedanycrystalline body with a certain degree of transparency (vitrum); it is hardly necessary to observe that the term is now appropriated to a particular species: in the same manner, Bark, which is a general term, is applied to expressonegenus, and by way of eminence it has the articleTheprefixed, asThebark; the same observation will apply to the word Opium, which, in its primitive sense, signifiesanyjuice (ὀπὸς,Succus), while it now only denotesonespecies, viz., that of the poppy. So, again,Elateriumwas used by Hippocrates to signify various internal applications, especially purgatives, of a violent and drastic nature (from the word ἐλαύνω,agito,moveo,stimulo), but by succeeding authors it was exclusively applied to denote the active matter which subsides[pg 486]from the juice of the wild cucumber. The wordFecula, again, originally meant to implyanysubstance which was derived by spontaneous subsidence from a liquid (fromfæx, the grounds or settlement ofanyliquor); afterward it was applied to Starch, which is deposited in this manner by agitating the flour of wheat in water; and, lastly, it has been applied to a peculiar vegetable principle, which, like starch, is insoluble in cold, but completely soluble in boiling water, with which it forms a gelatinous solution. This indefinite meaning of the wordfeculahas created numerous mistakes in pharmaceutic chemistry; Elaterium, for instance, is said to befecula, and, in the original sense of the word, it is properly so called, inasmuch as it is procured from a vegetable juice by spontaneous subsidence, but in the limited and modern acceptation of the term it conveys an erroneous idea; for instead of the active principle of the juice residing infecula, it is a peculiar proximate principle,sui generis, to which I have ventured to bestow the name ofElatin. For the same reason, much doubt and obscurity involve the meaning of the wordExtract, because it is appliedgenerallyto any substance obtained by the evaporation of a vegetable solution, andspecificallyto a peculiar proximate principle, possessed of certain characters, by which it is distinguished from every other elementary body.”

A generic term is always liable to become thus limited to a single species, or even individual, if people have occasion to think and speak of that individual or species much oftener than of any thing else which is contained in the genus. Thus by cattle, a stage-coachman will understand horses; beasts, in the language of agriculturists, stands for oxen; and birds, with some sportsmen, for partridges only. The law of language which operates in these trivial instances is the very same in conformity to which the terms Θεός, Deus, and God, were adopted from Polytheism by Christianity, to express the single object of its own adoration. Almost all the terminology of the Christian Church is made up of words originally used in a much more general acceptation:Ecclesia, Assembly;Bishop, Episcopus, Overseer;Priest, Presbyter, Elder;Deacon, Diaconus, Administrator;Sacrament, a vow of allegiance;Evangelium, good tidings; and some words, asMinister, are still used both in the general and in the limited sense. It would be interesting to trace the progress by whichauthorcame, in its most familiar sense, to signify a writer, and ποίητης, or maker, a poet.

Of the incorporation into the meaning of a term, of circumstances accidentally connected with it at some particular period, as in the case of Pagan, instances might easily be multiplied. Physician (φυσίκος, or naturalist) became, in England, synonymous with a healer of diseases, because until a comparatively late period medical practitioners were the only naturalists.Clerc, or clericus, a scholar, came to signify an ecclesiastic, because the clergy were for many centuries the only scholars.

Of all ideas, however, the most liable to cling by association to any thing with which they have ever been connected by proximity, are those of our pleasures and pains, or of the things which we habitually contemplate as sources of our pleasures or pains. The additional connotation, therefore, which a word soonest and most readily takes on, is that of agreeableness or painfulness, in their various kinds and degrees; of being a good or bad thing; desirable or to be avoided; an object of hatred, of dread, contempt, admiration, hope, or love. Accordingly there is hardly a single name, expressive of any moral or social fact calculated to call forth strong affections either of a favorable or of a hostile nature, which does not carry with it decidedly and irresistibly a connotation of those strong affections, or, at the[pg 487]least, of approbation or censure; insomuch that to employ those names in conjunction with others by which the contrary sentiments were expressed, would produce the effect of a paradox, or even a contradiction in terms. The baneful influence of a connotation thus acquired, on the prevailing habits of thought, especially in morals and politics, has been well pointed out on many occasions by Bentham. It gives rise to the fallacy of“question-begging names.”The very property which we are inquiring whether a thing possesses or not, has become so associated with the name of the thing as to be part of its meaning, insomuch that by merely uttering the name we assume the point which was to be made out; one of the most frequent sources of apparently self-evident propositions.

Without any further multiplication of examples to illustrate the changes which usage is continually making in the signification of terms, I shall add, as a practical rule, that the logician, not being able to prevent such transformations, should submit to them with a good grace when they are irrevocably effected, and if a definition is necessary, define the word according to its new meaning; retaining the former as a second signification, if it is needed, and if there is any chance of being able to preserve it either in the language of philosophy or in common use. Logicians can notmakethe meaning of any but scientific terms; that of all other words is made by the collective human race. But logicians can ascertain clearly what it is which, working obscurely, has guided the general mind to a particular employment of a name; and when they have found this, they can clothe it in such distinct and permanent terms, that mankind shall see the meaning which before they only felt, and shall not suffer it to be afterward forgotten or misapprehended.

Chapter VI.The Principles Of A Philosophical Language Further Considered.§ 1. We have, thus far, considered only one of the requisites of a language adapted for the investigation of truth; that its terms shall each of them convey a determinate and unmistakable meaning. There are, however, as we have already remarked, other requisites; some of them important only in the second degree, but one which is fundamental, and barely yields in point of importance, if it yields at all, to the quality which we have already discussed at so much length. That the language may be fitted for its purposes, not only should every word perfectly express its meaning, but there should be no important meaning without its word. Whatever we have occasion to think of often, and for scientific purposes, ought to have a name appropriated to it.This requisite of philosophical language may be considered under three different heads; that number of separate conditions being involved in it.§ 2. First, there ought to be all such names, as are needful for making such a record of individual observations that the words of the record shall exactly show what fact it is which has been observed. In other words, there should be an accurate Descriptive Terminology.The only things which we can observe directly being our own sensations, or other feelings, a complete descriptive language would be one in which there should be a name for every variety of elementary sensation or feeling.[pg 488]Combinations of sensations or feelings may always be described, if we have a name for each of the elementary feelings which compose them; but brevity of description, and clearness (which often depends very much on brevity), are greatly promoted by giving distinctive names not to the elements alone, but also to all combinations which are of frequent recurrence. On this occasion I can not do better than quote from Dr. Whewell222some of the excellent remarks which he has made on this important branch of our subject.“The meaning of [descriptive] technical terms can be fixed in the first instance only by convention, and can be made intelligible only by presenting to the senses that which the terms are to signify. The knowledge of a color by its name can only be taught through the eye. No description can convey to a hearer what we mean byapple-greenorFrench gray. It might, perhaps, be supposed that, in the first example, the termapple, referring to so familiar an object, sufficiently suggests the color intended. But it may easily be seen that this is not true; for apples are of many different hues of green, and it is only by a conventional selection that we can appropriate the term to one special shade. When this appropriation is once made, the term refers to the sensation, and not to the parts of the term; for these enter into the compound merely as a help to the memory, whether the suggestion be a natural connection as in‘apple-green,’or a casual one as in‘French gray.’In order to derive due advantage from technical terms of the kind, they must be associatedimmediatelywith the perception to which they belong; and not connected with it through the vague usages of common language. The memory must retain the sensation; and the technical word must be understood as directly as the most familiar word, and more distinctly. When we find such terms astin-whiteorpinchbeck-brown, the metallic color so denoted ought to start up in our memory without delay or search.“This, which it is most important to recollect with respect to the simpler properties of bodies, as color and form, is no less true with respect to more compound notions. In all cases the term is fixed to a peculiar meaning by convention; and the student, in order to use the word, must be completely familiar with the convention, so that he has no need to frame conjectures from the word itself. Such conjectures would always be insecure, and often erroneous. Thus the termpapilionaceousapplied to a flower is employed to indicate, not only a resemblance to a butterfly, but a resemblance arising from five petals of a certain-peculiar shape and arrangement; and even if the resemblance were much stronger than it is in such cases, yet, if it were produced in a different way, as, for example, by one petal, or two only, instead of a‘standard,’two‘wings,’and a‘keel’consisting of two parts more or less united into one, we should be no longer justified in speaking of it as a‘papilionaceous’flower.”When, however, the thing named is, as in this last case, a combination of simple sensations, it is not necessary, in order to learn the meaning of the word, that the student should refer back to the sensations themselves; it may be communicated to him through the medium of other words; the terms, in short, may be defined. But the names of elementary sensations, or elementary feelings of any sort, can not be defined; nor is there any mode of making their signification known but by making the learner experience the sensation, or referring him, through some known mark, to his[pg 489]remembrance of having experienced it before. Hence it is only the impressions on the outward senses, or those inward feelings which are connected in a very obvious and uniform manner with outward objects, that are really susceptible of an exact descriptive language. The countless variety of sensations which arise, for instance, from disease, or from peculiar physiological states, it would be in vain to attempt to name; for as no one can judge whether the sensation I have is the same with his, the name can not have, to us two, real community of meaning. The same may be said, to a considerable extent, of purely mental feelings. But in some of the sciences which are conversant with external objects, it is scarcely possible to surpass the perfection to which this quality of a philosophical language has been carried.“The formation223of an exact and extensive descriptive language for botany has been executed with a degree of skill and felicity, which, before it was attained, could hardly have been dreamed of as attainable. Every part of a plant has been named; and the form of every part, even the most minute, has had a large assemblage of descriptive terms appropriated to it, by means of which the botanist can convey and receive knowledge of form and structure, as exactly as if each minute part were presented to him vastly magnified. This acquisition was part of the Linnæan reform....‘Tournefort,’says Decandolle,‘appears to have been the first who really perceived the utility of fixing the sense of terms in such a way as always to employ the same word in the same sense, and always to express the same idea by the same words; but it was Linnæus who really created and fixed this botanical language, and this is his fairest claim to glory, for by this fixation of language he has shed clearness and precision over all parts of the science.’“It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the terms of botany. The fundamental ones have been gradually introduced, as the parts of plants were more carefully and minutely examined. Thus the flower was necessarily distinguished into thecalyx, thecorolla, thestamens, and thepistils; the sections of the corolla were termedpetalsby Columna; those of the calyx were calledsepalsby Necker. Sometimes terms of greater generality were devised; asperianth, to include the calyx and corolla, whether one or both of these were present;pericarp, for the part inclosing the grain, of whatever kind it be, fruit, nut, pod, etc. And it may easily be imagined, that descriptive terms may, by definition and combination, become very numerous and distinct. Thus leaves may be calledpinnatifid,pinnatipartite,pinnatisect,pinnatilobate,palmatifid,palmatipartite, etc., and each of these words designates different combinations of the modes and extent of the divisions of the leaf with the divisions of its outline. In some cases, arbitrary numerical relations are introduced into the definition: thus, a leaf is calledbilobate, when it is divided into two parts by a notch; but if the notch go to the middle of its length, it isbifid; if it go near the base of the leaf, it isbipartite; if to the base, it isbisect. Thus, too, a pod of a cruciferous plant is asiliqua, if it is four times as long as it is broad, but if it be shorter than this it is asilicula. Such terms being established, the form of the very complex leaf or frond of a fern (Hymenophyllum Wilsoni) is exactly conveyed by the following phrase:‘fronds rigid pinnate, pinnæ recurved subunilateral, pinnatifid, the segments linear undivided or bifid, spinuloso-serrate.’[pg 490]“Other characters, as well as form, are conveyed with the like precision: Color by means of a classified scale of colors.... This was done with most precision by Werner, and his scale of colors is still the most usual standard of naturalists. Werner also introduced a more exact terminology with regard to other characters which are important in mineralogy, as lustre, hardness. But Mohs improved upon this step by giving a numerical scale of hardness, in which talc is 1, gypsum 2, calc spar 3, and so on.... Some properties, as specific gravity, by their definition give at once a numerical measure; and others, as crystalline form, require a very considerable array of mathematical calculation and reasoning, to point out their relations and gradations.”§ 3. Thus far of Descriptive Terminology, or of the language requisite for placing on record our observation of individual instances. But when we proceed from this to Induction, or rather to that comparison of observed instances which is the preparatory step toward it, we stand in need of an additional and a different sort of general names.Whenever, for purposes of Induction, we find it necessary to introduce (in Dr. Whewell’s phraseology) some new general conception; that is, whenever the comparison of a set of phenomena leads to the recognition in them of some common circumstance, which, our attention not having been directed to it on any former occasion, is to us a new phenomenon; it is of importance that this new conception, or this new result of abstraction, should have a name appropriated to it; especially if the circumstance it involves be one which leads to many consequences, or which is likely to be found also in other classes of phenomena. No doubt, in most cases of the kind, the meaning might be conveyed by joining together several words already in use. But when a thing has to be often spoken of, there are more reasons than the saving of time and space, for speaking of it in the most concise manner possible. What darkness would be spread over geometrical demonstrations, if wherever the wordcircleis used, the definition of a circle were inserted instead of it. In mathematics and its applications, where the nature of the processes demands that the attention should be strongly concentrated, but does not require that it should be widely diffused, the importance of concentration also in the expressions has always been duly felt; and a mathematician no sooner finds that he shall often have occasion to speak of the same two things together, than he at once creates a term to express them whenever combined: just as, in his algebraical operations, he substitutes for (am+bn) p/q, or fora/b+b/c+c/d+ etc., the single letter P, Q, or S; not solely to shorten his symbolical expressions, but to simplify the purely intellectual part of his operations, by enabling the mind to give its exclusive attention to the relation between the quantity S and the other quantities which enter into the equation, without being distracted by thinking unnecessarily of the parts of which S is itself composed.But there is another reason, in addition to that of promoting perspicuity, for giving a brief and compact name to each of the more considerable results of abstraction which are obtained in the course of our intellectual phenomena. By naming them, we fix our attention upon them; we keep them more constantly before the mind. The names are remembered, and being remembered, suggest their definition; while if instead of specific[pg 491]and characteristic names, the meaning had been expressed by putting together a number of other names, that particular combination of words already in common use for other purposes would have had nothing to make itself remembered by. If we want to render a particular combination of ideas permanent in the mind, there is nothing which clinches it like a name specially devoted to express it. If mathematicians had been obliged to speak of“that to which a quantity, in increasing or diminishing, is always approaching nearer, so that the difference becomes less than any assignable quantity, but to which it never becomes exactly equal,”instead of expressing all this by the simple phrase,“the limit of a quantity,”we should probably have long remained without most of the important truths which have been discovered by means of the relation between quantities of various kinds and their limits. If instead of speaking ofmomentum, it had been necessary to say,“the product of the number of units of velocity in the velocity by the number of units of mass in the mass,”many of the dynamical truths now apprehended by means of this complex idea would probably have escaped notice, for want of recalling the idea itself with sufficient readiness and familiarity. And on subjects less remote from the topics of popular discussion, whoever wishes to draw attention to some new or unfamiliar distinction among things, will find no way so sure as to invent or select suitable names for the express purpose of marking it.A volume devoted to explaining what the writer means by civilization, does not raise so vivid a conception of it as the single expression, that Civilization is a different thing from Cultivation; the compactness of that brief designation for the contrasted quality being an equivalent for a long discussion. So, if we would impress forcibly upon the understanding and memory the distinction between the two different conceptions of a representative government, we can not more effectually do so than by saying that Delegation is not Representation. Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind, or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors, until aptly-selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fast.§ 4. Of the three essential parts of a philosophical language, we have now mentioned two: a terminology suited for describing with precision the individual facts observed; and a name for every common property of any importance or interest, which we detect by comparing those facts; including (as the concretes corresponding to those abstract terms) names for the classes which we artificially construct in virtue of those properties, or as many of them, at least, as we have frequent occasion to predicate any thing of.But there is a sort of classes, for the recognition of which no such elaborate process is necessary; because each of them is marked out from all others not by some one property, the detection of which may depend on a difficult act of abstraction, but by its properties generally. I mean, the Kinds of things, in the sense which, in this treatise, has been specially attached to that term. By a Kind, it will be remembered, we mean one of those classes which are distinguished from all others not by one or a few definite properties, but by an unknown multitude of them; the combination of properties on which the class is grounded, being a mere index to an indefinite number of other distinctive attributes. The class horse is a Kind, because the things which agree in possessing the characters by which[pg 492]we recognize a horse, agree in a great number of other properties, as we know, and, it can not be doubted, in many more than we know. Animal, again, is a Kind, because no definition that could be given of the name animal could either exhaust the properties common to all animals, or supply premises from which the remainder of those properties could be inferred. But a combination of properties which does not give evidence of the existence of any other independent peculiarities, does not constitute a Kind. White horse, therefore, is not a Kind; because horses which agree in whiteness, do not agree in any thing else, except the qualities common to all horses, and whatever may be the causes or effects of that particular color.On the principle that there should be a name for every thing which we have frequent occasion to make assertions about, there ought evidently to be a name for every Kind; for as it is the very meaning of a Kind that the individuals composing it have an indefinite multitude of properties in common, it follows that, if not with our present knowledge, yet with that which we may hereafter acquire, the Kind is a subject to which there will have to be applied many predicates. The third component element of a philosophical language, therefore, is that there shall be a name for every Kind. In other words, there must not only be a terminology, but also a nomenclature.The words Nomenclature and Terminology are employed by most authors almost indiscriminately; Dr. Whewell being, as far as I am aware, the first writer who has regularly assigned to the two words different meanings. The distinction, however, which he has drawn between them being real and important, his example is likely to be followed; and (as is apt to be the case when such innovations in language are felicitously made) a vague sense of the distinction is found to have influenced the employment of the terms in common practice, before the expediency had been pointed out of discriminating them philosophically. Every one would say that the reform effected by Lavoisier and Guyton-Morveau in the language of chemistry consisted in the introduction of a new nomenclature, not of a new terminology. Linear, lanceolate, oval, or oblong, serrated, dentate, or crenate leaves, are expressions forming part of the terminology of botany, while the names“Viola odorata,”and“Ulex Europæus,”belong to its nomenclature.A nomenclature may be defined, the collection of the names of all the Kinds with which any branch of knowledge is conversant; or more properly, of all the lowest Kinds, orinfirmæ species—those which may be subdivided indeed, but not into Kinds, and which generally accord with what in natural history are termed simply species. Science possesses two splendid examples of a systematic nomenclature; that of plants and animals, constructed by Linnæus and his successors, and that of chemistry, which we owe to the illustrious group of chemists who flourished in France toward the close of the eighteenth century. In these two departments, not only has every known species, or lowest Kind, a name assigned to it, but when new lowest Kinds are discovered, names are at once given to them on a uniform principle. In other sciences the nomenclature is not at present constructed on any system, either because the species to be named are not numerous enough to require one (as in geometry, for example), or because no one has yet suggested a suitable principle for such a system, as in mineralogy; in which the want of a scientifically constructed nomenclature is now the principal cause which retards the progress of the science.[pg 493]§ 5. A word which carries on its face that it belongs to a nomenclature, seems at first sight to differ from other concrete general names in this—that its meaning does not reside in its connotation, in the attributes implied in it, but in its denotation, that is, in the particular group of things which it is appointed to designate; and can not, therefore, be unfolded by means of a definition, but must be made known in another way. This opinion, however, appears to me erroneous. Words belonging to a nomenclature differ, I conceive, from other words mainly in this, that besides the ordinary connotation, they have a peculiar one of their own: besides connoting certain attributes, they also connote that those attributes are distinctive of a Kind. The term“peroxide of iron,”for example, belonging by its form to the systematic nomenclature of chemistry, bears on its face that it is the name of a peculiar Kind of substance. It moreover connotes, like the name of any other class, some portion of the properties common to the class; in this instance the property of being a compound of iron and the largest dose of oxygen with which iron will combine. These two things, the fact of being such a compound, and the fact of being a Kind, constitute the connotation of the name peroxide of iron. When we say of the substance before us, that it is the peroxide of iron, we thereby assert, first, that it is a compound of iron and a maximum of oxygen, and next, that the substance so composed is a peculiar Kind of substance.Now, this second part of the connotation of any word belonging to a nomenclature is as essential a portion of its meaning as the first part, while the definition only declares the first; and hence the appearance that the signification of such terms can not be conveyed by a definition: which appearance, however, is fallacious. The name Viola odorata denotes a Kind, of which a certain number of characters, sufficient to distinguish it, are enunciated in botanical works. This enumeration of characters is surely, as in other cases, a definition of the name. No, say some, it is not a definition, for the name Viola odorata does not mean those characters; it means that particular group of plants, and the characters are selected from among a much greater number, merely as marks by which to recognize the group. But to this I reply, that the name does not mean that group, for it would be applied to that group no longer than while the group is believed to be aninfima species; if it were to be discovered that several distinct Kinds have been confounded under this one name, no one would any longer apply the name Viola odorata to the whole of the group, but would apply it, if retained at all, to one only of the Kinds retained therein. What is imperative, therefore, is not that the name shall denote one particular collection of objects, but that it shall denote a Kind, and a lowest Kind. The form of the name declares that, happen what will, it is to denote aninfima species; and that, therefore, the properties which it connotes, and which are expressed in the definition, are to be connoted by it no longer than while we continue to believe that those properties, when found together, indicate a Kind, and that the whole of them are found in no more than one Kind.With the addition of this peculiar connotation, implied in the form of every word which belongs to a systematic nomenclature; the set of characters which is employed to discriminate each Kind from all other Kinds (and which is a real definition) constitutes as completely as in any other case the whole meaning of the term. It is no objection to say that (as is often the case in natural history) the set of characters may be changed, and another substituted as being better suited for the purpose[pg 494]of distinction, while the word, still continuing to denote the same group or things, is not considered to have changed its meaning. For this is no more than may happen in the case of any other general name: we may, in reforming its connotation, leave its denotation untouched; and it is generally desirable to do so. The connotation, however, is not the less for this the real meaning, for we at once apply the name wherever the characters set down in the definition are found; and that which exclusively guides us in applying the term, must constitute its signification. If we find, contrary to our previous belief, that the characters are not peculiar to one species, we cease to use the term co-extensively with the characters; but then it is because the other portion of the connotation fails; the condition that the class must be a Kind. The connotation, therefore, is still the meaning; the set of descriptive characters is a true definition; and the meaning is unfolded, not indeed (as in other cases) by the definition alone, but by the definition and the form of the word taken together.§ 6. We have now analyzed what is implied in the two principal requisites of a philosophical language; first, precision, or definiteness; and, secondly, completeness. Any further remarks on the mode of constructing a nomenclature must be deferred until we treat of Classification; the mode of naming the Kinds of things being necessarily subordinate to the mode of arranging those Kinds into larger classes. With respect to the minor requisites of terminology, some of them are well stated and illustrated in the“Aphorisms concerning the Language of Science,”included in Dr. Whewell’sPhilosophy of the Inductive Sciences. These, as being of secondary importance in the peculiar point of view of Logic, I shall not further refer to, but shall confine my observations to one more quality, which, next to the two already treated of, appears to be the most valuable which the language of science can possess. Of this quality a general notion may be conveyed by the following aphorism:Whenever the nature of the subject permits our reasoning processes to be, without danger, carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while, in the contrary case, it should be so constructed that there shall be the greatest possible obstacles to a merely mechanical use of it.I am aware that this maxim requires much explanation, which I shall at once proceed to give. At first, as to what is meant by using a language mechanically. The complete or extreme case of the mechanical use of language, is when it is used without any consciousness of a meaning, and with only the consciousness of using certain visible or audible marks in conformity to technical rules previously laid down. This extreme case is nowhere realized except in the figures of arithmetic, and still more the symbols of algebra, a language unique in its kind, and approaching as nearly to perfection, for the purposes to which it is destined, as can, perhaps, be said of any creation of the human mind. Its perfection consists in the completeness of its adaptation to a purely mechanical use. The symbols are mere counters, without even the semblance of a meaning apart from the convention which is renewed each time they are employed, and which is altered at each renewal, the same symbolaorxbeing used on different occasions to represent things which (except that, like all things, they are susceptible of being numbered) have no property in common. There is nothing, therefore, to distract the mind from the set of mechanical operations which are to be performed upon the symbols, such as squaring both sides[pg 495]of the equation, multiplying or dividing them by the same or by equivalent symbols, and so forth. Each of these operations, it is true, corresponds to a syllogism; represents one step of a ratiocination relating not to the symbols, but to the things signified by them. But as it has been found practicable to frame a technical form, by conforming to which we can make sure of finding the conclusion of the ratiocination, our end can be completely attained without our ever thinking of any thing but the symbols. Being thus intended to work merely as mechanism, they have the qualities which mechanism ought to have. They are of the least possible bulk, so that they take up scarcely any room, and waste no time in their manipulation; they are compact, and fit so closely together that the eye can take in the whole at once of almost every operation which they are employed to perform.These admirable properties of the symbolical language of mathematics have made so strong an impression on the minds of many thinkers, as to have led them to consider the symbolical language in question as the ideal type of philosophical language generally; to think that names in general, or (as they are fond of calling them) signs, are fitted for the purposes of thought in proportion as they can be made to approximate to the compactness, the entire unmeaningness, and the capability of being used as counters without a thought of what they represent, which are characteristic of theaandb, thexandy, of algebra. This notion has led to sanguine views of the acceleration of the progress of science by means which, I conceive, can not possibly conduce to that end, and forms part of that exaggerated estimate of the influence of signs, which has contributed in no small degree to prevent the real laws of our intellectual operations from being rightly understood.In the first place, a set of signs by which we reason without consciousness of their meaning, can be serviceable, at most, only in our deductive operations. In our direct inductions we can not for a moment dispense with a distinct mental image of the phenomena, since the whole operation turns on a perception of the particulars in which those phenomena agree and differ. But, further, this reasoning by counters is only suitable to a very limited portion even of our deductive processes. In our reasonings respecting numbers, the only general principles which we ever have occasion to introduce are these, Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and The sums or differences of equal things are equal; with their various corollaries. Not only can no hesitation ever arise respecting the applicability of these principles, since they are true of all magnitudes whatever; but every possible application of which they are susceptible, may be reduced to a technical rule; and such, in fact, the rules of the calculus are. But if the symbols represent any other things than mere numbers, let us say even straight or curve lines, we have then to apply theorems of geometry not true of all lines without exception, and to select those which are true of the lines we are reasoning about. And how can we do this unless we keep completely in mind what particular lines these are? Since additional geometrical truths may be introduced into the ratiocination in any stage of its progress, we can not suffer ourselves, during even the smallest part of it, to use the names mechanically (as we use algebraical symbols) without an image annexed to them. It is only after ascertaining that the solution of a question concerning lines can be made to depend on a previous question concerning numbers, or, in other words, after the question has been (to speak technically) reduced to an equation, that the unmeaning signs become available, and that the nature of the facts themselves to which the investigation[pg 496]relates can be dismissed from the mind. Up to the establishment of the equation, the language in which mathematicians carry on their reasoning does not differ in character from that employed by close reasoners on any other kind of subject.I do not deny that every correct ratiocination, when thrown into the syllogistic shape, is conclusive from the mere form of the expression, provided none of the terms used be ambiguous; and this is one of the circumstances which have led some writers to think that if all names were so judiciously constructed and so carefully defined as not to admit of any ambiguity, the improvement thus made in language would not only give to the conclusions of every deductive science the same certainty with those of mathematics, but would reduce all reasonings to the application of a technical form, and enable their conclusiveness to be rationally assented to after a merely mechanical process, as is undoubtedly the case in algebra. But, if we except geometry, the conclusions of which are already as certain and exact as they can be made, there is no science but that of number, in which the practical validity of a reasoning can be apparent to any person who has looked only at the reasoning itself. Whoever has assented to what was said in the last Book concerning the case of the Composition of Causes, and the still stronger case of the entire supersession of one set of laws by another, is aware that geometry and algebra are the only sciences of which the propositions are categorically true; the general propositions of all other sciences are true only hypothetically, supposing that no counteracting cause happens to interfere. A conclusion, therefore, however correctly deduced, in point of form, from admitted laws of nature, will have no other than an hypothetical certainty. At every step we must assure ourselves that no other law of nature has superseded, or intermingled its operation with, those which are the premises of the reasoning; and how can this be done by merely looking at the words? We must not only be constantly thinking of the phenomena themselves, but we must be constantly studying them; making ourselves acquainted with the peculiarities of every case to which we attempt to apply our general principles.The algebraic notation, considered as a philosophical language, is perfect in its adaptation to the subjects for which it is commonly employed, namely those of which the investigations have already been reduced to the ascertainment of a relation between numbers. But, admirable as it is for its own purpose, the properties by which it is rendered such are so far from constituting it the ideal model of philosophical language in general, that the more nearly the language of any other branch of science approaches to it, the less fit that language is for its own proper functions. On all other subjects, instead of contrivances to prevent our attention from being distracted by thinking of the meaning of our signs, we ought to wish for contrivances to make it impossible that we should ever lose sight of that meaning even for an instant.With this view, as much meaning as possible should be thrown into the formation of the word itself; the aids of derivation and analogy being made available to keep alive a consciousness of all that is signified by it. In this respect those languages have an immense advantage which form their compounds and derivatives from native roots, like the German, and not from those of a foreign or dead language, as is so much the case with English, French, and Italian; and the best are those which form them according to fixed analogies, corresponding to the relations between the ideas to be expressed. All languages do this more or less, but especially, among modern[pg 497]European languages, the German; while even that is inferior to the Greek, in which the relation between the meaning of a derivative word and that of its primitive is in general clearly marked by its mode of formation, except in the case of words compounded with prepositions, which are often, in both those languages, extremely anomalous.But all that can be done, by the mode of constructing words, to prevent them from degenerating into sounds passing through the mind without any distinct apprehension of what they signify, is far too little for the necessity of the case. Words, however well constructed originally, are always tending, like coins, to have their inscription worn off by passing from hand to hand; and the only possible mode of reviving it is to be ever stamping it afresh, by living in the habitual contemplation of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity with the words that express them. If any one, having possessed himself of the laws of phenomena as recorded in words, whether delivered to him originally by others, or even found out by himself, is content from thenceforth to live among these formulæ, to think exclusively of them, and of applying them to cases as they arise, without keeping up his acquaintance with the realities from which these laws were collected—not only will he continually fail in his practical efforts, because he will apply his formulæ without duly considering whether, in this case and in that, other laws of nature do not modify or supersede them; but the formulæ themselves will progressively lose their meaning to him, and he will cease at last even to be capable of recognizing with certainty whether a case falls within the contemplation of his formula or not. It is, in short, as necessary, on all subjects not mathematical, that the things on which we reason should be conceived by us in the concrete, and“clothed in circumstances,”as it is in algebra that we should keep all individualizing peculiarities sedulously out of view.With this remark we close our observations on the Philosophy of Language.

§ 1. We have, thus far, considered only one of the requisites of a language adapted for the investigation of truth; that its terms shall each of them convey a determinate and unmistakable meaning. There are, however, as we have already remarked, other requisites; some of them important only in the second degree, but one which is fundamental, and barely yields in point of importance, if it yields at all, to the quality which we have already discussed at so much length. That the language may be fitted for its purposes, not only should every word perfectly express its meaning, but there should be no important meaning without its word. Whatever we have occasion to think of often, and for scientific purposes, ought to have a name appropriated to it.

This requisite of philosophical language may be considered under three different heads; that number of separate conditions being involved in it.

§ 2. First, there ought to be all such names, as are needful for making such a record of individual observations that the words of the record shall exactly show what fact it is which has been observed. In other words, there should be an accurate Descriptive Terminology.

The only things which we can observe directly being our own sensations, or other feelings, a complete descriptive language would be one in which there should be a name for every variety of elementary sensation or feeling.[pg 488]Combinations of sensations or feelings may always be described, if we have a name for each of the elementary feelings which compose them; but brevity of description, and clearness (which often depends very much on brevity), are greatly promoted by giving distinctive names not to the elements alone, but also to all combinations which are of frequent recurrence. On this occasion I can not do better than quote from Dr. Whewell222some of the excellent remarks which he has made on this important branch of our subject.

“The meaning of [descriptive] technical terms can be fixed in the first instance only by convention, and can be made intelligible only by presenting to the senses that which the terms are to signify. The knowledge of a color by its name can only be taught through the eye. No description can convey to a hearer what we mean byapple-greenorFrench gray. It might, perhaps, be supposed that, in the first example, the termapple, referring to so familiar an object, sufficiently suggests the color intended. But it may easily be seen that this is not true; for apples are of many different hues of green, and it is only by a conventional selection that we can appropriate the term to one special shade. When this appropriation is once made, the term refers to the sensation, and not to the parts of the term; for these enter into the compound merely as a help to the memory, whether the suggestion be a natural connection as in‘apple-green,’or a casual one as in‘French gray.’In order to derive due advantage from technical terms of the kind, they must be associatedimmediatelywith the perception to which they belong; and not connected with it through the vague usages of common language. The memory must retain the sensation; and the technical word must be understood as directly as the most familiar word, and more distinctly. When we find such terms astin-whiteorpinchbeck-brown, the metallic color so denoted ought to start up in our memory without delay or search.

“This, which it is most important to recollect with respect to the simpler properties of bodies, as color and form, is no less true with respect to more compound notions. In all cases the term is fixed to a peculiar meaning by convention; and the student, in order to use the word, must be completely familiar with the convention, so that he has no need to frame conjectures from the word itself. Such conjectures would always be insecure, and often erroneous. Thus the termpapilionaceousapplied to a flower is employed to indicate, not only a resemblance to a butterfly, but a resemblance arising from five petals of a certain-peculiar shape and arrangement; and even if the resemblance were much stronger than it is in such cases, yet, if it were produced in a different way, as, for example, by one petal, or two only, instead of a‘standard,’two‘wings,’and a‘keel’consisting of two parts more or less united into one, we should be no longer justified in speaking of it as a‘papilionaceous’flower.”

When, however, the thing named is, as in this last case, a combination of simple sensations, it is not necessary, in order to learn the meaning of the word, that the student should refer back to the sensations themselves; it may be communicated to him through the medium of other words; the terms, in short, may be defined. But the names of elementary sensations, or elementary feelings of any sort, can not be defined; nor is there any mode of making their signification known but by making the learner experience the sensation, or referring him, through some known mark, to his[pg 489]remembrance of having experienced it before. Hence it is only the impressions on the outward senses, or those inward feelings which are connected in a very obvious and uniform manner with outward objects, that are really susceptible of an exact descriptive language. The countless variety of sensations which arise, for instance, from disease, or from peculiar physiological states, it would be in vain to attempt to name; for as no one can judge whether the sensation I have is the same with his, the name can not have, to us two, real community of meaning. The same may be said, to a considerable extent, of purely mental feelings. But in some of the sciences which are conversant with external objects, it is scarcely possible to surpass the perfection to which this quality of a philosophical language has been carried.

“The formation223of an exact and extensive descriptive language for botany has been executed with a degree of skill and felicity, which, before it was attained, could hardly have been dreamed of as attainable. Every part of a plant has been named; and the form of every part, even the most minute, has had a large assemblage of descriptive terms appropriated to it, by means of which the botanist can convey and receive knowledge of form and structure, as exactly as if each minute part were presented to him vastly magnified. This acquisition was part of the Linnæan reform....‘Tournefort,’says Decandolle,‘appears to have been the first who really perceived the utility of fixing the sense of terms in such a way as always to employ the same word in the same sense, and always to express the same idea by the same words; but it was Linnæus who really created and fixed this botanical language, and this is his fairest claim to glory, for by this fixation of language he has shed clearness and precision over all parts of the science.’

“It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the terms of botany. The fundamental ones have been gradually introduced, as the parts of plants were more carefully and minutely examined. Thus the flower was necessarily distinguished into thecalyx, thecorolla, thestamens, and thepistils; the sections of the corolla were termedpetalsby Columna; those of the calyx were calledsepalsby Necker. Sometimes terms of greater generality were devised; asperianth, to include the calyx and corolla, whether one or both of these were present;pericarp, for the part inclosing the grain, of whatever kind it be, fruit, nut, pod, etc. And it may easily be imagined, that descriptive terms may, by definition and combination, become very numerous and distinct. Thus leaves may be calledpinnatifid,pinnatipartite,pinnatisect,pinnatilobate,palmatifid,palmatipartite, etc., and each of these words designates different combinations of the modes and extent of the divisions of the leaf with the divisions of its outline. In some cases, arbitrary numerical relations are introduced into the definition: thus, a leaf is calledbilobate, when it is divided into two parts by a notch; but if the notch go to the middle of its length, it isbifid; if it go near the base of the leaf, it isbipartite; if to the base, it isbisect. Thus, too, a pod of a cruciferous plant is asiliqua, if it is four times as long as it is broad, but if it be shorter than this it is asilicula. Such terms being established, the form of the very complex leaf or frond of a fern (Hymenophyllum Wilsoni) is exactly conveyed by the following phrase:‘fronds rigid pinnate, pinnæ recurved subunilateral, pinnatifid, the segments linear undivided or bifid, spinuloso-serrate.’

“Other characters, as well as form, are conveyed with the like precision: Color by means of a classified scale of colors.... This was done with most precision by Werner, and his scale of colors is still the most usual standard of naturalists. Werner also introduced a more exact terminology with regard to other characters which are important in mineralogy, as lustre, hardness. But Mohs improved upon this step by giving a numerical scale of hardness, in which talc is 1, gypsum 2, calc spar 3, and so on.... Some properties, as specific gravity, by their definition give at once a numerical measure; and others, as crystalline form, require a very considerable array of mathematical calculation and reasoning, to point out their relations and gradations.”

§ 3. Thus far of Descriptive Terminology, or of the language requisite for placing on record our observation of individual instances. But when we proceed from this to Induction, or rather to that comparison of observed instances which is the preparatory step toward it, we stand in need of an additional and a different sort of general names.

Whenever, for purposes of Induction, we find it necessary to introduce (in Dr. Whewell’s phraseology) some new general conception; that is, whenever the comparison of a set of phenomena leads to the recognition in them of some common circumstance, which, our attention not having been directed to it on any former occasion, is to us a new phenomenon; it is of importance that this new conception, or this new result of abstraction, should have a name appropriated to it; especially if the circumstance it involves be one which leads to many consequences, or which is likely to be found also in other classes of phenomena. No doubt, in most cases of the kind, the meaning might be conveyed by joining together several words already in use. But when a thing has to be often spoken of, there are more reasons than the saving of time and space, for speaking of it in the most concise manner possible. What darkness would be spread over geometrical demonstrations, if wherever the wordcircleis used, the definition of a circle were inserted instead of it. In mathematics and its applications, where the nature of the processes demands that the attention should be strongly concentrated, but does not require that it should be widely diffused, the importance of concentration also in the expressions has always been duly felt; and a mathematician no sooner finds that he shall often have occasion to speak of the same two things together, than he at once creates a term to express them whenever combined: just as, in his algebraical operations, he substitutes for (am+bn) p/q, or fora/b+b/c+c/d+ etc., the single letter P, Q, or S; not solely to shorten his symbolical expressions, but to simplify the purely intellectual part of his operations, by enabling the mind to give its exclusive attention to the relation between the quantity S and the other quantities which enter into the equation, without being distracted by thinking unnecessarily of the parts of which S is itself composed.

But there is another reason, in addition to that of promoting perspicuity, for giving a brief and compact name to each of the more considerable results of abstraction which are obtained in the course of our intellectual phenomena. By naming them, we fix our attention upon them; we keep them more constantly before the mind. The names are remembered, and being remembered, suggest their definition; while if instead of specific[pg 491]and characteristic names, the meaning had been expressed by putting together a number of other names, that particular combination of words already in common use for other purposes would have had nothing to make itself remembered by. If we want to render a particular combination of ideas permanent in the mind, there is nothing which clinches it like a name specially devoted to express it. If mathematicians had been obliged to speak of“that to which a quantity, in increasing or diminishing, is always approaching nearer, so that the difference becomes less than any assignable quantity, but to which it never becomes exactly equal,”instead of expressing all this by the simple phrase,“the limit of a quantity,”we should probably have long remained without most of the important truths which have been discovered by means of the relation between quantities of various kinds and their limits. If instead of speaking ofmomentum, it had been necessary to say,“the product of the number of units of velocity in the velocity by the number of units of mass in the mass,”many of the dynamical truths now apprehended by means of this complex idea would probably have escaped notice, for want of recalling the idea itself with sufficient readiness and familiarity. And on subjects less remote from the topics of popular discussion, whoever wishes to draw attention to some new or unfamiliar distinction among things, will find no way so sure as to invent or select suitable names for the express purpose of marking it.

A volume devoted to explaining what the writer means by civilization, does not raise so vivid a conception of it as the single expression, that Civilization is a different thing from Cultivation; the compactness of that brief designation for the contrasted quality being an equivalent for a long discussion. So, if we would impress forcibly upon the understanding and memory the distinction between the two different conceptions of a representative government, we can not more effectually do so than by saying that Delegation is not Representation. Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind, or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors, until aptly-selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fast.

§ 4. Of the three essential parts of a philosophical language, we have now mentioned two: a terminology suited for describing with precision the individual facts observed; and a name for every common property of any importance or interest, which we detect by comparing those facts; including (as the concretes corresponding to those abstract terms) names for the classes which we artificially construct in virtue of those properties, or as many of them, at least, as we have frequent occasion to predicate any thing of.

But there is a sort of classes, for the recognition of which no such elaborate process is necessary; because each of them is marked out from all others not by some one property, the detection of which may depend on a difficult act of abstraction, but by its properties generally. I mean, the Kinds of things, in the sense which, in this treatise, has been specially attached to that term. By a Kind, it will be remembered, we mean one of those classes which are distinguished from all others not by one or a few definite properties, but by an unknown multitude of them; the combination of properties on which the class is grounded, being a mere index to an indefinite number of other distinctive attributes. The class horse is a Kind, because the things which agree in possessing the characters by which[pg 492]we recognize a horse, agree in a great number of other properties, as we know, and, it can not be doubted, in many more than we know. Animal, again, is a Kind, because no definition that could be given of the name animal could either exhaust the properties common to all animals, or supply premises from which the remainder of those properties could be inferred. But a combination of properties which does not give evidence of the existence of any other independent peculiarities, does not constitute a Kind. White horse, therefore, is not a Kind; because horses which agree in whiteness, do not agree in any thing else, except the qualities common to all horses, and whatever may be the causes or effects of that particular color.

On the principle that there should be a name for every thing which we have frequent occasion to make assertions about, there ought evidently to be a name for every Kind; for as it is the very meaning of a Kind that the individuals composing it have an indefinite multitude of properties in common, it follows that, if not with our present knowledge, yet with that which we may hereafter acquire, the Kind is a subject to which there will have to be applied many predicates. The third component element of a philosophical language, therefore, is that there shall be a name for every Kind. In other words, there must not only be a terminology, but also a nomenclature.

The words Nomenclature and Terminology are employed by most authors almost indiscriminately; Dr. Whewell being, as far as I am aware, the first writer who has regularly assigned to the two words different meanings. The distinction, however, which he has drawn between them being real and important, his example is likely to be followed; and (as is apt to be the case when such innovations in language are felicitously made) a vague sense of the distinction is found to have influenced the employment of the terms in common practice, before the expediency had been pointed out of discriminating them philosophically. Every one would say that the reform effected by Lavoisier and Guyton-Morveau in the language of chemistry consisted in the introduction of a new nomenclature, not of a new terminology. Linear, lanceolate, oval, or oblong, serrated, dentate, or crenate leaves, are expressions forming part of the terminology of botany, while the names“Viola odorata,”and“Ulex Europæus,”belong to its nomenclature.

A nomenclature may be defined, the collection of the names of all the Kinds with which any branch of knowledge is conversant; or more properly, of all the lowest Kinds, orinfirmæ species—those which may be subdivided indeed, but not into Kinds, and which generally accord with what in natural history are termed simply species. Science possesses two splendid examples of a systematic nomenclature; that of plants and animals, constructed by Linnæus and his successors, and that of chemistry, which we owe to the illustrious group of chemists who flourished in France toward the close of the eighteenth century. In these two departments, not only has every known species, or lowest Kind, a name assigned to it, but when new lowest Kinds are discovered, names are at once given to them on a uniform principle. In other sciences the nomenclature is not at present constructed on any system, either because the species to be named are not numerous enough to require one (as in geometry, for example), or because no one has yet suggested a suitable principle for such a system, as in mineralogy; in which the want of a scientifically constructed nomenclature is now the principal cause which retards the progress of the science.

§ 5. A word which carries on its face that it belongs to a nomenclature, seems at first sight to differ from other concrete general names in this—that its meaning does not reside in its connotation, in the attributes implied in it, but in its denotation, that is, in the particular group of things which it is appointed to designate; and can not, therefore, be unfolded by means of a definition, but must be made known in another way. This opinion, however, appears to me erroneous. Words belonging to a nomenclature differ, I conceive, from other words mainly in this, that besides the ordinary connotation, they have a peculiar one of their own: besides connoting certain attributes, they also connote that those attributes are distinctive of a Kind. The term“peroxide of iron,”for example, belonging by its form to the systematic nomenclature of chemistry, bears on its face that it is the name of a peculiar Kind of substance. It moreover connotes, like the name of any other class, some portion of the properties common to the class; in this instance the property of being a compound of iron and the largest dose of oxygen with which iron will combine. These two things, the fact of being such a compound, and the fact of being a Kind, constitute the connotation of the name peroxide of iron. When we say of the substance before us, that it is the peroxide of iron, we thereby assert, first, that it is a compound of iron and a maximum of oxygen, and next, that the substance so composed is a peculiar Kind of substance.

Now, this second part of the connotation of any word belonging to a nomenclature is as essential a portion of its meaning as the first part, while the definition only declares the first; and hence the appearance that the signification of such terms can not be conveyed by a definition: which appearance, however, is fallacious. The name Viola odorata denotes a Kind, of which a certain number of characters, sufficient to distinguish it, are enunciated in botanical works. This enumeration of characters is surely, as in other cases, a definition of the name. No, say some, it is not a definition, for the name Viola odorata does not mean those characters; it means that particular group of plants, and the characters are selected from among a much greater number, merely as marks by which to recognize the group. But to this I reply, that the name does not mean that group, for it would be applied to that group no longer than while the group is believed to be aninfima species; if it were to be discovered that several distinct Kinds have been confounded under this one name, no one would any longer apply the name Viola odorata to the whole of the group, but would apply it, if retained at all, to one only of the Kinds retained therein. What is imperative, therefore, is not that the name shall denote one particular collection of objects, but that it shall denote a Kind, and a lowest Kind. The form of the name declares that, happen what will, it is to denote aninfima species; and that, therefore, the properties which it connotes, and which are expressed in the definition, are to be connoted by it no longer than while we continue to believe that those properties, when found together, indicate a Kind, and that the whole of them are found in no more than one Kind.

With the addition of this peculiar connotation, implied in the form of every word which belongs to a systematic nomenclature; the set of characters which is employed to discriminate each Kind from all other Kinds (and which is a real definition) constitutes as completely as in any other case the whole meaning of the term. It is no objection to say that (as is often the case in natural history) the set of characters may be changed, and another substituted as being better suited for the purpose[pg 494]of distinction, while the word, still continuing to denote the same group or things, is not considered to have changed its meaning. For this is no more than may happen in the case of any other general name: we may, in reforming its connotation, leave its denotation untouched; and it is generally desirable to do so. The connotation, however, is not the less for this the real meaning, for we at once apply the name wherever the characters set down in the definition are found; and that which exclusively guides us in applying the term, must constitute its signification. If we find, contrary to our previous belief, that the characters are not peculiar to one species, we cease to use the term co-extensively with the characters; but then it is because the other portion of the connotation fails; the condition that the class must be a Kind. The connotation, therefore, is still the meaning; the set of descriptive characters is a true definition; and the meaning is unfolded, not indeed (as in other cases) by the definition alone, but by the definition and the form of the word taken together.

§ 6. We have now analyzed what is implied in the two principal requisites of a philosophical language; first, precision, or definiteness; and, secondly, completeness. Any further remarks on the mode of constructing a nomenclature must be deferred until we treat of Classification; the mode of naming the Kinds of things being necessarily subordinate to the mode of arranging those Kinds into larger classes. With respect to the minor requisites of terminology, some of them are well stated and illustrated in the“Aphorisms concerning the Language of Science,”included in Dr. Whewell’sPhilosophy of the Inductive Sciences. These, as being of secondary importance in the peculiar point of view of Logic, I shall not further refer to, but shall confine my observations to one more quality, which, next to the two already treated of, appears to be the most valuable which the language of science can possess. Of this quality a general notion may be conveyed by the following aphorism:

Whenever the nature of the subject permits our reasoning processes to be, without danger, carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while, in the contrary case, it should be so constructed that there shall be the greatest possible obstacles to a merely mechanical use of it.

I am aware that this maxim requires much explanation, which I shall at once proceed to give. At first, as to what is meant by using a language mechanically. The complete or extreme case of the mechanical use of language, is when it is used without any consciousness of a meaning, and with only the consciousness of using certain visible or audible marks in conformity to technical rules previously laid down. This extreme case is nowhere realized except in the figures of arithmetic, and still more the symbols of algebra, a language unique in its kind, and approaching as nearly to perfection, for the purposes to which it is destined, as can, perhaps, be said of any creation of the human mind. Its perfection consists in the completeness of its adaptation to a purely mechanical use. The symbols are mere counters, without even the semblance of a meaning apart from the convention which is renewed each time they are employed, and which is altered at each renewal, the same symbolaorxbeing used on different occasions to represent things which (except that, like all things, they are susceptible of being numbered) have no property in common. There is nothing, therefore, to distract the mind from the set of mechanical operations which are to be performed upon the symbols, such as squaring both sides[pg 495]of the equation, multiplying or dividing them by the same or by equivalent symbols, and so forth. Each of these operations, it is true, corresponds to a syllogism; represents one step of a ratiocination relating not to the symbols, but to the things signified by them. But as it has been found practicable to frame a technical form, by conforming to which we can make sure of finding the conclusion of the ratiocination, our end can be completely attained without our ever thinking of any thing but the symbols. Being thus intended to work merely as mechanism, they have the qualities which mechanism ought to have. They are of the least possible bulk, so that they take up scarcely any room, and waste no time in their manipulation; they are compact, and fit so closely together that the eye can take in the whole at once of almost every operation which they are employed to perform.

These admirable properties of the symbolical language of mathematics have made so strong an impression on the minds of many thinkers, as to have led them to consider the symbolical language in question as the ideal type of philosophical language generally; to think that names in general, or (as they are fond of calling them) signs, are fitted for the purposes of thought in proportion as they can be made to approximate to the compactness, the entire unmeaningness, and the capability of being used as counters without a thought of what they represent, which are characteristic of theaandb, thexandy, of algebra. This notion has led to sanguine views of the acceleration of the progress of science by means which, I conceive, can not possibly conduce to that end, and forms part of that exaggerated estimate of the influence of signs, which has contributed in no small degree to prevent the real laws of our intellectual operations from being rightly understood.

In the first place, a set of signs by which we reason without consciousness of their meaning, can be serviceable, at most, only in our deductive operations. In our direct inductions we can not for a moment dispense with a distinct mental image of the phenomena, since the whole operation turns on a perception of the particulars in which those phenomena agree and differ. But, further, this reasoning by counters is only suitable to a very limited portion even of our deductive processes. In our reasonings respecting numbers, the only general principles which we ever have occasion to introduce are these, Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and The sums or differences of equal things are equal; with their various corollaries. Not only can no hesitation ever arise respecting the applicability of these principles, since they are true of all magnitudes whatever; but every possible application of which they are susceptible, may be reduced to a technical rule; and such, in fact, the rules of the calculus are. But if the symbols represent any other things than mere numbers, let us say even straight or curve lines, we have then to apply theorems of geometry not true of all lines without exception, and to select those which are true of the lines we are reasoning about. And how can we do this unless we keep completely in mind what particular lines these are? Since additional geometrical truths may be introduced into the ratiocination in any stage of its progress, we can not suffer ourselves, during even the smallest part of it, to use the names mechanically (as we use algebraical symbols) without an image annexed to them. It is only after ascertaining that the solution of a question concerning lines can be made to depend on a previous question concerning numbers, or, in other words, after the question has been (to speak technically) reduced to an equation, that the unmeaning signs become available, and that the nature of the facts themselves to which the investigation[pg 496]relates can be dismissed from the mind. Up to the establishment of the equation, the language in which mathematicians carry on their reasoning does not differ in character from that employed by close reasoners on any other kind of subject.

I do not deny that every correct ratiocination, when thrown into the syllogistic shape, is conclusive from the mere form of the expression, provided none of the terms used be ambiguous; and this is one of the circumstances which have led some writers to think that if all names were so judiciously constructed and so carefully defined as not to admit of any ambiguity, the improvement thus made in language would not only give to the conclusions of every deductive science the same certainty with those of mathematics, but would reduce all reasonings to the application of a technical form, and enable their conclusiveness to be rationally assented to after a merely mechanical process, as is undoubtedly the case in algebra. But, if we except geometry, the conclusions of which are already as certain and exact as they can be made, there is no science but that of number, in which the practical validity of a reasoning can be apparent to any person who has looked only at the reasoning itself. Whoever has assented to what was said in the last Book concerning the case of the Composition of Causes, and the still stronger case of the entire supersession of one set of laws by another, is aware that geometry and algebra are the only sciences of which the propositions are categorically true; the general propositions of all other sciences are true only hypothetically, supposing that no counteracting cause happens to interfere. A conclusion, therefore, however correctly deduced, in point of form, from admitted laws of nature, will have no other than an hypothetical certainty. At every step we must assure ourselves that no other law of nature has superseded, or intermingled its operation with, those which are the premises of the reasoning; and how can this be done by merely looking at the words? We must not only be constantly thinking of the phenomena themselves, but we must be constantly studying them; making ourselves acquainted with the peculiarities of every case to which we attempt to apply our general principles.

The algebraic notation, considered as a philosophical language, is perfect in its adaptation to the subjects for which it is commonly employed, namely those of which the investigations have already been reduced to the ascertainment of a relation between numbers. But, admirable as it is for its own purpose, the properties by which it is rendered such are so far from constituting it the ideal model of philosophical language in general, that the more nearly the language of any other branch of science approaches to it, the less fit that language is for its own proper functions. On all other subjects, instead of contrivances to prevent our attention from being distracted by thinking of the meaning of our signs, we ought to wish for contrivances to make it impossible that we should ever lose sight of that meaning even for an instant.

With this view, as much meaning as possible should be thrown into the formation of the word itself; the aids of derivation and analogy being made available to keep alive a consciousness of all that is signified by it. In this respect those languages have an immense advantage which form their compounds and derivatives from native roots, like the German, and not from those of a foreign or dead language, as is so much the case with English, French, and Italian; and the best are those which form them according to fixed analogies, corresponding to the relations between the ideas to be expressed. All languages do this more or less, but especially, among modern[pg 497]European languages, the German; while even that is inferior to the Greek, in which the relation between the meaning of a derivative word and that of its primitive is in general clearly marked by its mode of formation, except in the case of words compounded with prepositions, which are often, in both those languages, extremely anomalous.

But all that can be done, by the mode of constructing words, to prevent them from degenerating into sounds passing through the mind without any distinct apprehension of what they signify, is far too little for the necessity of the case. Words, however well constructed originally, are always tending, like coins, to have their inscription worn off by passing from hand to hand; and the only possible mode of reviving it is to be ever stamping it afresh, by living in the habitual contemplation of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity with the words that express them. If any one, having possessed himself of the laws of phenomena as recorded in words, whether delivered to him originally by others, or even found out by himself, is content from thenceforth to live among these formulæ, to think exclusively of them, and of applying them to cases as they arise, without keeping up his acquaintance with the realities from which these laws were collected—not only will he continually fail in his practical efforts, because he will apply his formulæ without duly considering whether, in this case and in that, other laws of nature do not modify or supersede them; but the formulæ themselves will progressively lose their meaning to him, and he will cease at last even to be capable of recognizing with certainty whether a case falls within the contemplation of his formula or not. It is, in short, as necessary, on all subjects not mathematical, that the things on which we reason should be conceived by us in the concrete, and“clothed in circumstances,”as it is in algebra that we should keep all individualizing peculiarities sedulously out of view.

With this remark we close our observations on the Philosophy of Language.

Back to IndexNext