For, in order to give a connotation to a name, consistently with its

denoting certain objects, we have to make our selection from among the

various attributes in which those objects agree. To ascertain in what they

do agree is, therefore, the first logical operation requisite. When this

has been done as far as is necessary or practicable, the question arises,

which of these common attributes shall be selected to be associated with

the name. For if the class which the name denotes be a Kind, the common

properties are innumerable; and even if not, they are often extremely

numerous. Our choice is first limited by the preference to be given to

properties which are well known, and familiarly predicated of the class;

but even these are often too numerous to be all included in the

definition, and, besides, the properties most generally known may not be

those which serve best to mark out the class from all others. We should

therefore select from among the common properties (if among them any such

are to be found) those on which it has been ascertained by experience, or

proved by deduction, that many others depend; or at least which are sure

marks of them, and from whence, therefore, many others will follow by

inference. We thus see that to frame a good definition of a name already

in use, is not a matter of choice but of discussion, and discussion not

merely respecting the usage of language, but respecting the properties of

things, and even the origin of those properties. And hence every

enlargement of our knowledge of the objects to which the name is applied,

is liable to suggest an improvement in the definition. It is impossible to

frame a perfect set of definitions on any subject, until the theory of the

subject is perfect; and as science makes progress, its definitions are

also progressive.

§ 4. The discussion of Definitions, in so far as it does not turn on the

use of words but on the properties of things, Dr. Whewell calls the

Explication of Conceptions. The act of ascertaining, better than before,

in what particulars any phenomena which are classed together agree, he

calls in his technical phraseology, unfolding the general conception in

virtue of which they are so classed. Making allowance for what appears to

me the darkening and misleading tendency of this mode of expression,

several of his remarks are so much to the purpose, that I shall take the

liberty of transcribing them.

He observes,(213) that many of the controversies which have had an

important share in the formation of the existing body of science, have

“assumed the form of a battle of Definitions. For example, the inquiry

concerning the laws of falling bodies led to the question whether the

proper definition of a _uniform force_ is that it generates a velocity

proportional to the _space_ from rest, or to the _time_. The controversy

of the _vis viva_ was what was the proper definition of the _measure of

force_. A principal question in the classification of minerals is, what is

the definition of a _mineral species_. Physiologists have endeavored to

throw light on their subject by defining _organization_, or some similar

term.” Questions of the same nature were long open and are not yet

completely closed, respecting the definitions of Specific Heat, Latent

Heat, Chemical Combination, and Solution.

“It is very important for us to observe, that these controversies have

never been questions of insulated and _arbitrary_ definitions, as men seem

often tempted to imagine them to have been. In all cases there is a tacit

assumption of some proposition which is to be expressed by means of the

definition, and which gives it its importance. The dispute concerning the

definition thus acquires a real value, and becomes a question concerning

true and false. Thus, in the discussion of the question, What is a uniform

force? it was taken for granted that gravity is a uniform force. In the

debate of the _vis viva_, it was assumed that in the mutual action of

bodies the whole effect of the force is unchanged. In the zoological

definition of species (that it consists of individuals which have, or may

have, sprung from the same parents), it is presumed that individuals so

related resemble each other more than those which are excluded by such a

definition; or, perhaps, that species so defined have permanent and

definite differences. A definition of organization, or of some other term

which was not employed to express some principle, would be of no value.

“The establishment, therefore, of a right definition of a term, may be a

useful step in the explication of our conceptions; but this will be the

case then only when we have under our consideration some proposition in

which the term is employed. For then the question really is, how the

conception shall be understood and defined in order that the proposition

may be true.

“To unfold our conceptions by means of definitions has never been

serviceable to science, except when it has been associated with an

immediate use of the definitions. The endeavor to define a Uniform Force

was combined with the assertion that gravity is a uniform force; the

attempt to define Accelerating Force was immediately followed by the

doctrine that accelerating forces may be compounded; the process of

defining Momentum was connected with the principle that momenta gained and

lost are equal; naturalists would have given in vain the definition of

Species which we have quoted, if they had not also given the characters of

species so separated.... Definition may be the best mode of explaining our

conception, but that which alone makes it worth while to explain it in any

mode, is the opportunity of using it in the expression of truth. When a

definition is propounded to us as a useful step in knowledge, we are

always entitled to ask what principle it serves to enunciate.”

In giving, then, an exact connotation to the phrase, “a uniform force,”

the condition was understood, that the phrase should continue to denote

gravity. The discussion, therefore, respecting the definition, resolved

itself into this question, What is there of a uniform nature in the

motions produced by gravity? By observations and comparisons, it was found

that what was uniform in those motions was the ratio of the velocity

acquired to the time elapsed; equal velocities being added in equal times.

A uniform force, therefore, was defined a force which adds equal

velocities in equal times. So, again, in defining momentum. It was already

a received doctrine that, when two objects impinge upon one another, the

momentum lost by the one is equal to that gained by the other. This

proposition it was deemed necessary to preserve, not from the motive

(which operates in many other cases) that it was firmly fixed in popular

belief; for the proposition in question had never been heard of by any but

the scientifically instructed. But it was felt to contain a truth; even a

superficial observation of the phenomena left no doubt that in the

propagation of motion from one body to another, there was something of

which the one body gained precisely what the other lost; and the word

momentum had been invented to express this unknown something. The

settlement, therefore, of the definition of momentum, involved the

determination of the question, What is that of which a body, when it sets

another body in motion, loses exactly as much as it communicates? And when

experiment had shown that this _something_ was the product of the velocity

of the body by its mass, or quantity of matter, this became the definition

of momentum.

The following remarks,(214) therefore, are perfectly just: “The business

of definition is part of the business of discovery.... To define, so that

our definition shall have any scientific value, requires no small portion

of that sagacity by which truth is detected.... When it has been clearly

seen what ought to be our definition, it must be pretty well known what

truth we have to state. The definition, as well as the discovery, supposes

a decided step in our knowledge to have been made. The writers on Logic,

in the Middle Ages, made Definition the last stage in the progress of

knowledge; and in this arrangement at least, the history of science, and

the philosophy derived from the history, confirm their speculative views.”

For in order to judge finally how the name which denotes a class may best

be defined, we must know all the properties common to the class, and all

the relations of causation or dependence among those properties.

If the properties which are fittest to be selected as marks of other

common properties are also obvious and familiar, and especially if they

bear a great part in producing that general air of resemblance which was

the original inducement to the formation of the class, the definition will

then be most felicitous. But it is often necessary to define the class by

some property not familiarly known, provided that property be the best

mark of those which are known. M. De Blainville, for instance, founded his

definition of life on the process of decomposition and recomposition which

incessantly takes place in every living body, so that the particles

composing it are never for two instants the same. This is by no means one

of the most obvious properties of living bodies; it might escape

altogether the notice of an unscientific observer. Yet great authorities

(independently of M. De Blainville, who is himself a first-rate authority)

have thought that no other property so well answers the conditions

required for the definition.

§ 5. Having laid down the principles which ought for the most part to be

observed in attempting to give a precise connotation to a term in use, I

must now add, that it is not always practicable to adhere to those

principles, and that even when practicable, it is occasionally not

desirable.

Cases in which it is impossible to comply with all the conditions of a

precise definition of a name in agreement with usage, occur very

frequently. There is often no one connotation capable of being given to a

word, so that it shall still denote every thing it is accustomed to

denote; or that all the propositions into which it is accustomed to enter,

and which have any foundation in truth, shall remain true. Independently

of accidental ambiguities, in which the different meanings have no

connection with one another; it continually happens that a word is used in

two or more senses derived from each other, but yet radically distinct. So

long as a term is vague, that is, so long as its connotation is not

ascertained and permanently fixed, it is constantly liable to be applied

by _extension_ from one thing to another, until it reaches things which

have little, or even no, resemblance to those which were first designated

by it.

“Suppose,” says Dugald Stewart, in his _Philosophical Essays_,(215) “that

the letters A, B, C, D, E, denote a series of objects; that A possesses

some one quality in common with B; B a quality in common with C; C a

quality in common with D; D a quality in common with E; while at the same

time, no quality can be found which belongs in common to any _three_

objects in the series. Is it not conceivable, that the affinity between A

and B may produce a transference of the name of the first to the second;

and that, in consequence of the other affinities which connect the

remaining objects together, the same name may pass in succession from B to

C; from C to D; and from D to E? In this manner, a common appellation will

arise between A and E, although the two objects may, in their nature and

properties, be so widely distant from each other, that no stretch of

imagination can conceive how the thoughts were led from the former to the

latter. The transitions, nevertheless, may have been all so easy and

gradual, that, were they successfully detected by the fortunate ingenuity

of a theorist, we should instantly recognize, not only the verisimilitude,

but the truth of the conjecture: in the same way as we admit, with the

confidence of intuitive conviction, the certainty of the well-known

etymological process which connects the Latin preposition _e_ or _ex_ with

the English substantive _stranger_, the moment that the intermediate links

of the chain are submitted to our examination.”(216)

The applications which a word acquires by this gradual extension of it

from one set of objects to another, Stewart, adopting an expression from

Mr. Payne Knight, calls its _transitive_ applications; and after briefly

illustrating such of them as are the result of local or casual

associations, he proceeds as follows:(217)

“But although by far the greater part of the transitive or derivative

applications of words depend on casual and unaccountable caprices of the

feelings or the fancy, there are certain cases in which they open a very

interesting field of philosophical speculation. Such are those, in which

an analogous transference of the corresponding term may be remarked

universally, or very generally, in other languages; and in which, of

course, the uniformity of the result must be ascribed to the essential

principles of the human frame. Even in such cases, however, it will by no

means be always found, on examination, that the various applications of

the same term have arisen from any common quality or qualities in the

objects to which they relate. In the greater number of instances, they may

be traced to some natural and universal associations of ideas, founded in

the common faculties, common organs, and common condition of the human

race.... According to the different degrees of intimacy and strength in

the associations on which the _transitions_ of language are founded, very

different effects may be expected to arise. Where the association is

slight and casual, the several meanings will remain distinct from each

other, and will often, in process of time, assume the appearance of

capricious varieties in the use of the same arbitrary sign. _Where the

association is so natural and habitual as to become virtually

indissoluble, the transitive meanings will coalesce in one complex

conception; and every new transition will become a more comprehensive

generalization of the term in question._”

I solicit particular attention to the law of mind expressed in the last

sentence, and which is the source of the perplexity so often experienced

in detecting these transitions of meaning. Ignorance of that law is the

shoal on which some of the most powerful intellects which have adorned the

human race have been stranded. The inquiries of Plato into the definitions

of some of the most general terms of moral speculation are characterized

by Bacon as a far nearer approach to a true inductive method than is

elsewhere to be found among the ancients, and are, indeed, almost perfect

examples of the preparatory process of comparison and abstraction; but,

from being unaware of the law just mentioned, he often wasted the powers

of this great logical instrument on inquiries in which it could realize no

result, since the phenomena, whose common properties he so elaborately

endeavored to detect, had not really any common properties. Bacon himself

fell into the same error in his speculations on the nature of heat, in

which he evidently confounded under the name hot, classes of phenomena

which have no property in common. Stewart certainly overstates the matter

when he speaks of “a prejudice which has descended to modern times from

the scholastic ages, that when a word admits of a variety of

significations, these different significations must all be species of the

same genus, and must consequently include some essential idea common to

every individual to which the generic term can be applied;”(218) for both

Aristotle and his followers were well aware that there are such things as

ambiguities of language, and delighted in distinguishing them. But they

never suspected ambiguity in the cases where (as Stewart remarks) the

association on which the transition of meaning was founded is so natural

and habitual, that the two meanings blend together in the mind, and a real

transition becomes an apparent generalization. Accordingly they wasted

infinite pains in endeavoring to find a definition which would serve for

several distinct meanings at once; as in an instance noticed by Stewart

himself, that of “causation; the ambiguity of the word which, in the Greek

language corresponds to the English word _cause_, having suggested to them

the vain attempt of tracing the common idea which, in the case of any

_effect_, belongs to the _efficient_, to the _matter_, to the _form_, and

to the _end_. The idle generalities” (he adds) “we meet with in other

philosophers, about the ideas of the _good_, the _fit_, and the

_becoming_, have taken their rise from the same undue influence of popular

epithets on the speculations of the learned.”(219)

Among the words which have undergone so many successive transitions of

meaning that every trace of a property common to all the things they are

applied to, or at least common and also peculiar to those things, has been

lost, Stewart considers the word Beautiful to be one. And (without

attempting to decide a question which in no respect belongs to logic) I

can not but feel, with him, considerable doubt whether the word beautiful

connotes the same property when we speak of a beautiful color, a beautiful

face, a beautiful scene, a beautiful character, and a beautiful poem. The

word was doubtless extended from one of these objects to another on

account of a resemblance between them, or, more probably, between the

emotions they excited; and, by this progressive extension, it has at last

reached things very remote from those objects of sight to which there is

no doubt that it was first appropriated; and it is at least questionable

whether there is now any property common to all the things which,

consistently with usage, may be called beautiful, except the property of

agreeableness, which the term certainly does connote, but which can not be

all that people usually intend to express by it, since there are many

agreeable things which are never called beautiful. If such be the case, it

is impossible to give to the word Beautiful any fixed connotation, such

that it shall denote all the objects which in common use it now denotes,

but no others. A fixed connotation, however, it ought to have; for, so

long as it has not, it is unfit to be used as a scientific term, and is a

perpetual source of false analogies and erroneous generalizations.

This, then, constitutes a case in exemplification of our remark, that even

when there is a property common to all the things denoted by a name, to

erect that property into the definition and exclusive connotation of the

name is not always desirable. The various things called beautiful

unquestionably resemble one another in being agreeable; but to make this

the definition of beauty, and so extend the word Beautiful to all

agreeable things, would be to drop altogether a portion of meaning which

the word really, though indistinctly, conveys, and to do what depends on

us toward causing those qualities of the objects which the word

previously, though vaguely, pointed at, to be overlooked and forgotten. It

is better, in such a case, to give a fixed connotation to the term by

restricting, than by extending its use; rather excluding from the epithet

Beautiful some things to which it is commonly considered applicable, than

leaving out of its connotation any of the qualities by which, though

occasionally lost sight of, the general mind may have been habitually

guided in the commonest and most interesting applications of the term. For

there is no question that when people call any thing beautiful, they think

they are asserting more than that it is merely agreeable. They think they

are ascribing a peculiar _sort_ of agreeableness, analogous to that which

they find in some other of the things to which they are accustomed to

apply the same name. If, therefore, there be any peculiar sort of

agreeableness which is common though not to all, yet to the principal

things which are called beautiful, it is better to limit the denotation of

the term to those things, than to leave that kind of quality without a

term to connote it, and thereby divert attention from its peculiarities.

§ 6. The last remark exemplifies a rule of terminology, which is of great

importance, and which has hardly yet been recognized as a rule, but by a

few thinkers of the present century. In attempting to rectify the use of a

vague term by giving it a fixed connotation, we must take care not to

discard (unless advisedly, and on the ground of a deeper knowledge of the

subject) any portion of the connotation which the word, in however

indistinct a manner, previously carried with it. For otherwise language

loses one of its inherent and most valuable properties, that of being the

conservator of ancient experience; the keeper-alive of those thoughts and

observations of former ages, which may be alien to the tendencies of the

passing time. This function of language is so often overlooked or

undervalued, that a few observations on it appear to be extremely

required.

Even when the connotation of a term has been accurately fixed, and still

more if it has been left in the state of a vague unanalyzed feeling of

resemblance; there is a constant tendency in the word, through familiar

use, to part with a portion of its connotation. It is a well-known law of

the mind, that a word originally associated with a very complex cluster of

ideas, is far from calling up all those ideas in the mind, every time the

word is used; it calls up only one or two, from which the mind runs on by

fresh associations to another set of ideas, without waiting for the

suggestion of the remainder of the complex cluster. If this were not the

case, processes of thought could not take place with any thing like the

rapidity which we know they possess. Very often, indeed, when we are

employing a word in our mental operations, we are so far from waiting

until the complex idea which corresponds to the meaning of the word is

consciously brought before us in all its parts, that we run on to new

trains of ideas by the other associations which the mere word excites,

without having realized in our imagination any part whatever of the

meaning; thus using the word, and even using it well and accurately, and

carrying on important processes of reasoning by means of it, in an almost

mechanical manner; so much so, that some metaphysicians, generalizing from

an extreme case, have fancied that all reasoning is but the mechanical use

of a set of terms according to a certain form. We may discuss and settle

the most important interests of towns or nations, by the application of

general theorems or practical maxims previously laid down, without having

had consciously suggested to us, once in the whole process, the houses and

green fields, the thronged market-places and domestic hearths, of which

not only those towns and nations consist, but which the words town and

nation confessedly mean.

Since, then, general names come in this manner to be used (and even to do

a portion of their work well) without suggesting to the mind the whole of

their meaning, and often with the suggestion of a very small, or no part

at all of that meaning; we can not wonder that words so used come in time

to be no longer capable of suggesting any other of the ideas appropriated

to them, than those with which the association is most immediate and

strongest, or most kept up by the incidents of life; the remainder being

lost altogether; unless the mind, by often consciously dwelling on them,

keeps up the association. Words naturally retain much more of their

meaning to persons of active imagination, who habitually represent to

themselves things in the concrete, with the detail which belongs to them

in the actual world. To minds of a different description, the only

antidote to this corruption of language is predication. The habit of

predicating of the name, all the various properties which it originally

connoted, keeps up the association between the name and those properties.

But in order that it may do so, it is necessary that the predicates should

themselves retain their association with the properties which they

severally connote. For the propositions can not keep the meaning of the

words alive, if the meaning of the propositions themselves should die. And

nothing is more common than for propositions to be mechanically repeated,

mechanically retained in the memory, and their truth undoubtingly assented

to and relied on, while yet they carry no meaning distinctly home to the

mind; and while the matter of fact or law of nature which they originally

expressed is as much lost sight of, and practically disregarded, as if it

never had been heard of at all. In those subjects which are at the same

time familiar and complicated, and especially in those which are so in as

great a degree as moral and social subjects are, it is a matter of common

remark how many important propositions are believed and repeated from

habit, while no account could be given, and no sense is practically

manifested, of the truths which they convey. Hence it is, that the

traditional maxims of old experience, though seldom questioned, have often

so little effect on the conduct of life; because their meaning is never,

by most persons, really felt, until personal experience has brought it

home. And thus also it is that so many doctrines of religion, ethics, and

even politics, so full of meaning and reality to first converts, have

manifested (after the association of that meaning with the verbal formulas

has ceased to be kept up by the controversies which accompanied their

first introduction) a tendency to degenerate rapidly into lifeless dogmas;

which tendency, all the efforts of an education expressly and skillfully

directed to keeping the meaning alive, are barely sufficient to

counteract.

Considering, then, that the human mind, in different generations, occupies

itself with different things, and in one age is led by the circumstances

which surround it to fix more of its attention upon one of the properties

of a thing, in another age upon another; it is natural and inevitable that

in every age a certain portion of our recorded and traditional knowledge,

not being continually suggested by the pursuits and inquiries with which

mankind are at that time engrossed, should fall asleep, as it were, and

fade from the memory. It would be in danger of being totally lost, if the

propositions or formulas, the results of the previous experience, did not

remain, as forms of words it may be, but of words that once really

conveyed, and are still supposed to convey, a meaning: which meaning,

though suspended, may be historically traced, and when suggested, may be

recognized by minds of the necessary endowments as being still matter of

fact, or truth. While the formulas remain, the meaning may at any time

revive; and as, on the one hand, the formulas progressively lose the

meaning they were intended to convey, so, on the other, when this

forgetfulness has reached its height and begun to produce obvious

consequences, minds arise which from the contemplation of the formulas

rediscover the truth, when truth it was, which was contained in them, and

announce it again to mankind, not as a discovery, but as the meaning of

that which they have been taught, and still profess to believe.

Thus there is a perpetual oscillation in spiritual truths, and in

spiritual doctrines of any significance, even when not truths. Their

meaning is almost always in a process either of being lost or of being

recovered. Whoever has attended to the history of the more serious

convictions of mankind—of the opinions by which the general conduct of

their lives is, or as they conceive ought to be, more especially

regulated—is aware that even when recognizing verbally the same doctrines,

they attach to them at different periods a greater or a less quantity, and

even a different kind of meaning. The words in their original acceptation

connoted, and the propositions expressed, a complication of outward facts

and inward feelings, to different portions of which the general mind is

more particularly alive in different generations of mankind. To common

minds, only that portion of the meaning is in each generation suggested,

of which that generation possesses the counterpart in its own habitual

experience. But the words and propositions lie ready to suggest to any

mind duly prepared the remainder of the meaning. Such individual minds are

almost always to be found; and the lost meaning, revived by them, again by

degrees works its way into the general mind.

The arrival of this salutary reaction may, however, be materially retarded

by the shallow conceptions and incautious proceedings of mere logicians.

It sometimes happens that toward the close of the downward period, when

the words have lost part of their significance, and have not yet begun to

recover it, persons arise whose leading and favorite idea is the

importance of clear conceptions and precise thought, and the necessity,

therefore, of definite language. These persons, in examining the old

formulas, easily perceive that words are used in them without a meaning;

and if they are not the sort of persons who are capable of rediscovering

the lost signification, they naturally enough dismiss the formula, and

define the name without reference to it. In so doing they fasten down the

name to what it connotes in common use at the time when it conveys the

smallest quantity of meaning; and introduce the practice of employing it,

consistently and uniformly, according to that connotation. The word in

this way acquires an extent of denotation far beyond what it had before;

it becomes extended to many things to which it was previously, in

appearance capriciously, refused. Of the propositions in which it was

formerly used, those which were true in virtue of the forgotten part of

its meaning are now, by the clearer light which the definition diffuses,

seen not to be true according to the definition; which, however, is the

recognized and sufficiently correct expression of all that is perceived to

be in the mind of any one by whom the term is used at the present day. The

ancient formulas are consequently treated as prejudices; and people are no

longer taught as before, though not to understand them, yet to believe

that there is truth in them. They no longer remain in the general mind

surrounded by respect, and ready at any time to suggest their original

meaning. Whatever truths they contain are not only, in these

circumstances, rediscovered far more slowly, but, when rediscovered, the

prejudice with which novelties are regarded is now, in some degree at

least, against them, instead of being on their side.

An example may make these remarks more intelligible. In all ages, except

where moral speculation has been silenced by outward compulsion, or where

the feelings which prompt to it still continue to be satisfied by the

traditional doctrines of an established faith, one of the subjects which

have most occupied the minds of thinking persons is the inquiry, What is

virtue? or, What is a virtuous character? Among the different theories on

the subject which have, at different times, grown up and obtained partial

currency, every one of which reflected as in the clearest mirror the

express image of the age which gave it birth; there was one, according to

which virtue consists in a correct calculation of our own personal

interests, either in this world only, or also in another. To make this

theory plausible, it was of course necessary that the only beneficial

actions which people in general were accustomed to see, or were therefore

accustomed to praise, should be such as were, or at least might without

contradicting obvious facts be supposed to be, the result of a prudential

regard to self-interest; so that the words really connoted no more, in

common acceptation, than was set down in the definition.

Suppose, now, that the partisans of this theory had contrived to introduce

a consistent and undeviating use of the term according to this definition.

Suppose that they had seriously endeavored, and had succeeded in the

endeavor, to banish the word disinterestedness from the language; had

obtained the disuse of all expressions attaching odium to selfishness or

commendation to self-sacrifice, or which implied generosity or kindness to

be any thing but doing a benefit in order to receive a greater personal

advantage in return. Need we say that this abrogation of the old formulas

for the sake of preserving clear ideas and consistency of thought, would

have been a great evil? while the very inconsistency incurred by the

co-existence of the formulas with philosophical opinions which seemed to

condemn them as absurdities, operated as a stimulus to the re-examination

of the subject and thus the very doctrines originating in the oblivion

into which a part of the truth had fallen, were rendered indirectly, but

powerfully, instrumental to its revival.

The doctrine of the Coleridge school, that the language of any people

among whom culture is of old date, is a sacred deposit, the property of

all ages, and which no one age should consider itself empowered to

alter—borders indeed, as thus expressed, on an extravagance; but it is

grounded on a truth, frequently overlooked by that class of logicians who

think more of having a clear than of having a comprehensive meaning; and

who perceive that every age is adding to the truths which it has received

from its predecessors, but fail to see that a counter process of losing

truths already possessed, is also constantly going on, and requiring the

most sedulous attention to counteract it. Language is the depository of

the accumulated body of experience to which all former ages have

contributed their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to come.

We have no right to prevent ourselves from transmitting to posterity a

larger portion of this inheritance than we may ourselves have profited by.

However much we may be able to improve on the conclusions of our

forefathers, we ought to be careful not inadvertently to let any of their

premises slip through our fingers. It may be good to alter the meaning of

a word, but it is bad to let any part of the meaning drop. Whoever seeks

to introduce a more correct use of a term with which important

associations are connected, should be required to possess an accurate

acquaintance with the history of the particular word, and of the opinions

which in different stages of its progress it served to express. To be

qualified to define the name, we must know all that has ever been known of

the properties of the class of objects which are, or originally were,

denoted by it. For if we give it a meaning according to which any

proposition will be false which has ever been generally held to be true,

it is incumbent on us to be sure that we know and have considered all

which those who believed the proposition understood by it.

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 are _certainly_ present whenever the name

is employed, any other circumstance may _casually_ be 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 word _gentleman_, 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 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 word

_loyalty_. 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 a _loyal chevalier_ and 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 to _villager_; the inhabitant of a

_pagus_, 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 word _paganus_ carried 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 when _paganus_ had

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 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 word _villain_

or _villein_. 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 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 verb _transpire_ formerly conveyed very

expressively its correct meaning, viz., to _become known_ through

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 of _to happen_: “the events which have _transpired_ in 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 word _alone_ as an adverb, _only_ not 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 is _not alone_ bound, 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 not _only responsible_ but

something more; or that he is responsible _not only for this_ but 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 writing _predicate_ for _predict_ has 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 of _eliminating_ some truth, or other useful

result, from a mass of details.(220) A similar permanent deterioration in

the language is 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 translating _demander_ by “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; as _salt_, for

example, or _oil_; 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 words _glass_ and _soap_ are 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 phrase _landed

proprietor_ into 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 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 words

_pagan_ and _villain_, 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

his _Pharmacologia_,(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 term _Verbena_ (quasi _Herbena_) 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 as

_one_ herb was usually adopted upon these occasions, the word Verbena came

to denote that particular herb _only_, 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, denoted _any_

crystalline 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 express _one_ genus, and by way of eminence it has the article

_The_ prefixed, as _The_ bark; the same observation will apply to the word

Opium, which, in its primitive sense, signifies _any_ juice (ὀπὸς,

_Succus_), while it now only denotes _one_ species, viz., that of the

poppy. So, again, _Elaterium_ was 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 from the juice of the wild cucumber. The word _Fecula_,

again, originally meant to imply _any_ substance which was derived by

spontaneous subsidence from a liquid (from _fæx_, the grounds or

settlement of _any_ liquor); 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

word _fecula_ has created numerous mistakes in pharmaceutic chemistry;

Elaterium, for instance, is said to be _fecula_, 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 in _fecula_, it is a

peculiar proximate principle, _sui generis_, to which I have ventured to

bestow the name of _Elatin_. For the same reason, much doubt and obscurity

involve the meaning of the word _Extract_, because it is applied

_generally_ to any substance obtained by the evaporation of a vegetable

solution, and _specifically_ to 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, as _Minister_, are still used both in the general

and in the limited sense. It would be interesting to trace the progress by

which _author_ came, 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 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 not _make_ the 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. 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.

Whewell(222) some 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 by _apple-green_ or

_French gray_. It might, perhaps, be supposed that, in the first example,

the term _apple_, 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 associated _immediately_ with 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 as _tin-white_ or _pinchbeck-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 term _papilionaceous_ applied 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 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 formation(223) of 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 the _calyx_, the _corolla_, the _stamens_,

and the _pistils_; the sections of the corolla were termed _petals_ by

Columna; those of the calyx were called _sepals_ by Necker. Sometimes

terms of greater generality were devised; as _perianth_, 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 called _pinnatifid_, _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 called _bilobate_, when it is divided into two parts by a notch;

but if the notch go to the middle of its length, it is _bifid_; if it go

near the base of the leaf, it is _bipartite_; if to the base, it is

_bisect_. Thus, too, a pod of a cruciferous plant is a _siliqua_, if it is

four times as long as it is broad, but if it be shorter than this it is a

_silicula_. 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 word _circle_ is 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 (_a_m + _b_n) p/q, or for

_a_/_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

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 of _momentum_, 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 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, or _infirmæ 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 an _infima 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 an _infima 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 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’s _Philosophy 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 symbol _a_ or _x_ being

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 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 the _a_ and _b_, the _x_ and _y_, 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 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 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 VII.

Of Classification, As Subsidiary To Induction.

§ 1. There is, as has been frequently remarked in this work, a

classification of things, which is inseparable from the fact of giving

them general names. Every name which connotes an attribute, divides, by

that very fact, all things whatever into two classes, those which have the

attribute and those which have it not; those of which the name can be

predicated, and those of which it can not. And the division thus made is

not merely a division of such things as actually exist, or are known to

exist, but of all such as may hereafter be discovered, and even of all

which can be imagined.

On this kind of Classification we have nothing to add to what has

previously been said. The Classification which requires to be discussed as

a separate act of the mind, is altogether different. In the one, the

arrangement of objects in groups, and distribution of them into

compartments, is a mere incidental effect consequent on the use of names

given for another purpose, namely that of simply expressing some of their

qualities. In the other, the arrangement and distribution are the main

object, and the naming is secondary to, and purposely conforms itself to,

instead of governing, that more important operation.

Classification, thus regarded, is a contrivance for the best possible

ordering of the ideas of objects in our minds; for causing the ideas to

accompany or succeed one another in such a way as shall give us the

greatest command over our knowledge already acquired, and lead most

directly to the acquisition of more. The general problem of

Classification, in reference to these purposes, may be stated as follows:

To provide that things shall be thought of in such groups, and those

groups in such an order, as will best conduce to the remembrance and to

the ascertainment of their laws.

Classification thus considered, differs from classification in the wider

sense, in having reference to real objects exclusively, and not to all

that are imaginable: its object being the due co-ordination in our minds

of those things only, with the properties of which we have actually

occasion to make ourselves acquainted. But, on the other hand, it embraces

_all_ really existing objects. We can not constitute any one class

properly, except in reference to a general division of the whole of

nature; we can not determine the group in which any one object can most

conveniently be placed, without taking into consideration all the

varieties of existing objects, all at least which have any degree of

affinity with it. No one family of plants or animals could have been

rationally constituted, except as part of a systematic arrangement of all

plants or animals; nor could such a general arrangement have been properly

made, without first determining the exact place of plants and animals in a

general division of nature.

§ 2. There is no property of objects which may not be taken, if we please,

as the foundation for a classification or mental grouping of those

objects; and in our first attempts we are likely to select for that

purpose properties which are simple, easily conceived, and perceptible on

a first view, without any previous process of thought. Thus Tournefort’s

arrangement of plants was founded on the shape and divisions of the

corolla; and that which is commonly called the Linnæan (though Linnæus

also suggested another and more scientific arrangement) was grounded

chiefly on the number of the stamens and pistils.

But these classifications, which are at first recommended by the facility

they afford of ascertaining to what class any individual belongs, are

seldom much adapted to the ends of that Classification which is the

subject of our present remarks. The Linnæan arrangement answers the

purpose of making us think together of all those kinds of plants which

possess the same number of stamens and pistils; but to think of them in

that manner is of little use, since we seldom have any thing to affirm in

common of the plants which have a given number of stamens and pistils. If

plants of the class Pentandria, order Monogynia, agreed in any other

properties, the habit of thinking and speaking of the plants under a

common designation would conduce to our remembering those common

properties so far as they were ascertained, and would dispose us to be on

the lookout for such of them as were not yet known. But since this is not

the case, the only purpose of thought which the Linnæan classification

serves is that of causing us to remember, better than we should otherwise

have done, the exact number of stamens and pistils of every species of

plants. Now, as this property is of little importance or interest, the

remembering it with any particular accuracy is of no moment. And, inasmuch

as, by habitually thinking of plants in those groups, we are prevented

from habitually thinking of them in groups which have a greater number of

properties in common, the effect of such a classification, when

systematically adhered to, upon our habits of thought, must be regarded as

mischievous.

The ends of scientific classification are best answered, when the objects

are formed into groups respecting which a greater number of general

propositions can be made, and those propositions more important, than

could be made respecting any other groups into which the same things could

be distributed. The properties, therefore, according to which objects are

classified, should, if possible, be those which are causes of many other

properties; or, at any rate, which are sure marks of them. Causes are

preferable, both as being the surest and most direct of marks, and as

being themselves the properties on which it is of most use that our

attention should be strongly fixed. But the property which is the cause of

the chief peculiarities of a class, is unfortunately seldom fitted to

serve also as the diagnostic of the class. Instead of the cause, we must

generally select some of its more prominent effects, which may serve as

marks of the other effects and of the cause.

A classification thus formed is properly scientific or philosophical, and

is commonly called a Natural, in contradistinction to a Technical or

Artificial, classification or arrangement. The phrase Natural

Classification seems most peculiarly appropriate to such arrangements as

correspond, in the groups which they form, to the spontaneous tendencies

of the mind, by placing together the objects most similar in their general

aspect; in opposition to those technical systems which, arranging things

according to their agreement in some circumstance arbitrarily selected,

often throw into the same group objects which in the general aggregate of

their properties present no resemblance, and into different and remote

groups, others which have the closest similarity. It is one of the most

valid recommendations of any classification to the character of a

scientific one, that it shall be a natural classification in this sense

also; for the test of its scientific character is the number and

importance of the properties which can be asserted in common of all

objects included in a group; and properties on which the general aspect of

the things depends are, if only on that ground, important, as well as, in

most cases, numerous. But, though a strong recommendation, this

circumstance is not a _sine qua non_; since the most obvious properties of

things may be of trifling importance compared with others that are not

obvious. I have seen it mentioned as a great absurdity in the Linnæan

classification, that it places (which by-the-way it does not) the violet

by the side of the oak; it certainly dissevers natural affinities, and

brings together things quite as unlike as the oak and the violet are. But

the difference, apparently so wide, which renders the juxtaposition of

those two vegetables so suitable an illustration of a bad arrangement,

depends, to the common eye, mainly on mere size and texture; now if we

made it our study to adopt the classification which would involve the

least peril of similar _rapprochements_, we should return to the obsolete

division into trees, shrubs, and herbs, which though of primary importance

with regard to mere general aspect, yet (compared even with so petty and

unobvious a distinction as that into dicotyledons and monocotyledons)

answers to so few differences in the other properties of plants, that a

classification founded on it (independently of the indistinctness of the

lines of demarcation) would be as completely artificial and technical as

the Linnæan.

Our natural groups, therefore, must often be founded not on the obvious

but on the unobvious properties of things, when these are of greater

importance. But in such cases it is essential that there should be some

other property or set of properties, more readily recognizable by the

observer, which co-exist with, and may be received as marks of, the

properties which are the real groundwork of the classification. A natural

arrangement, for example, of animals, must be founded in the main on their

internal structure, but (as M. Comte remarks) it would be absurd that we

should not be able to determine the genus and species of an animal without

first killing it. On this ground, the preference, among zoological

classifications, is probably due to that of M. De Blainville, founded on

the differences in the external integuments; differences which correspond,

much more accurately than might be supposed, to the really important

varieties, both in the other parts of the structure, and in the habits and

history of the animals.

This shows, more strongly than ever, how extensive a knowledge of the

properties of objects is necessary for making a good classification of

them. And as it is one of the uses of such a classification that by

drawing attention to the properties on which it is founded, and which, if

the classification be good, are marks of many others, it facilitates the

discovery of those others; we see in what manner our knowledge of things,

and our classification of them, tend mutually and indefinitely to the

improvement of each other.

We said just now that the classification of objects should follow those of

their properties which indicate not only the most numerous, but also the

most important peculiarities. What is here meant by importance? It has

reference to the particular end in view; and the same objects, therefore,

may admit with propriety of several different classifications. Each

science or art forms its classification of things according to the

properties which fall within its special cognizance, or of which it must

take account in order to accomplish its peculiar practical end. A farmer

does not divide plants, like a botanist, into dicotyledonous and

monocotyledonous, but into useful plants and weeds. A geologist divides

fossils, not like a zoologist, into families corresponding to those of

living species, but into fossils of the paleozoic, mesozoic, and tertiary

periods, above the coal and below the coal, etc. Whales are or are not

fish according to the purpose for which we are considering them. “If we

are speaking of the internal structure and physiology of the animal, we

must not call them fish; for in these respects they deviate widely from

fishes; they have warm blood, and produce and suckle their young as land

quadrupeds do. But this would not prevent our speaking of the

_whale-fishery_, and calling such animals _fish_ on all occasions

connected with this employment; for the relations thus arising depend upon

the animal’s living in the water, and being caught in a manner similar to

other fishes. A plea that human laws which mention fish do not apply to

whales, would be rejected at once by an intelligent judge.”(224)

These different classifications are all good, for the purposes of their

own particular departments of knowledge or practice. But when we are

studying objects not for any special practical end, but for the sake of

extending our knowledge of the whole of their properties and relations, we

must consider as the most important attributes those which contribute

most, either by themselves or by their effects, to render the things like

one another, and unlike other things; which give to the class composed of

them the most marked individuality; which fill, as it were, the largest

space in their existence, and would most impress the attention of a

spectator who knew all their properties but was not specially interested

in any. Classes formed on this principle may be called, in a more emphatic

manner than any others, natural groups.

§ 3. On the subject of these groups Dr. Whewell lays down a theory,

grounded on an important truth, which he has, in some respects, expressed

and illustrated very felicitously, but also, as it appears to me, with

some admixture of error. It will be advantageous, for both these reasons,

to extract the statement of his doctrine in the very words he has used.

“Natural groups,” according to this theory,(225) are “given by Type, not

by Definition.” And this consideration accounts for that “indefiniteness

and indecision which we frequently find in the descriptions of such

groups, and which must appear so strange and inconsistent to any one who

does not suppose these descriptions to assume any deeper ground of

connection than an arbitrary choice of the botanist. Thus in the family of

the rose-tree, we are told that the _ovules_ are _very rarely_ erect, the

_stigmata usually_ simple. Of what use, it might be asked, can such loose

accounts be? To which the answer is, that they are not inserted in order

to distinguish the species, but in order to describe the family, and the

total relations of the ovules and the stigmata of the family are better

known by this general statement. A similar observation may be made with

regard to the Anomalies of each group, which occur so commonly, that Dr.

Lindley, in his _Introduction to the Natural System of Botany_, makes the

‘Anomalies’ an article in each family. Thus, part of the character of the

Rosaceæ is, that they have alternate _stipulate_ leaves, and that the

_albumen_ is _obliterated_; but yet in _Lowea_, one of the genera of this

family, the stipulæ are _absent_; and the albumen is _present_ in another,

_Neillia_. This implies, as we have already seen, that the artificial

character (or _diagnosis_, as Mr. Lindley calls it) is imperfect. It is,

though very nearly, yet not exactly, commensurate with the natural group;

and hence in certain cases this character is made to yield to the general

weight of natural affinities.

“These views—of classes determined by characters which can not be

expressed in words—of propositions which state, not what happens in all

cases, but only usually—of particulars which are included in a class,

though they transgress the definition of it, may probably surprise the

reader. They are so contrary to many of the received opinions respecting

the use of definitions, and the nature of scientific propositions, that

they will probably appear to many persons highly illogical and

unphilosophical. But a disposition to such a judgment arises in a great

measure from this, that the mathematical and mathematico-physical sciences

have, in a great degree, determined men’s views of the general nature and

form of scientific truth; while Natural History has not yet had time or

opportunity to exert its due influence upon the current habits of

philosophizing. The apparent indefiniteness and inconsistency of the

classifications and definitions of Natural History belongs, in a far

higher degree, to all other except mathematical speculations; and the

modes in which approximations to exact distinctions and general truths

have been made in Natural History, may be worthy our attention, even for

the light they throw upon the best modes of pursuing truth of all kinds.

“Though in a Natural group of objects a definition can no longer be of any

use as a regulative principle, classes are not therefore left quite loose,

without any certain standard or guide. The class is steadily fixed, though

not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is

determined, not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point within;

not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an

example, not by a precept; in short, instead of a Definition we have a

Type for our director.

“A Type is an example of any class, for instance a species of a genus,

which is considered as eminently possessing the character of the class.

All the species which have a greater affinity with this type-species than

with any others, form the genus, and are arranged about it, deviating from

it in various directions and different degrees. Thus a genus may consist

of several species which approach very near the type, and of which the

claim to a place with it is obvious; while there may be other species

which straggle farther from this central knot, and which yet are clearly

more connected with it than with any other. And even if there should be

some species of which the place is dubious, and which appear to be equally

bound to two generic types, it is easily seen that this would not destroy

the reality of the generic groups, any more than the scattered trees of

the intervening plain prevent our speaking intelligibly of the distinct

forests of two separate hills.

“The type-species of every genus, the type-genus of every family, is then,

one which possesses all the characters and properties of the genus in a

marked and prominent manner. The type of the Rose family has alternate

stipulate leaves, wants the albumen, has the ovules not erect, has the

stigmata simple, and besides these features, which distinguish it from the

exceptions or varieties of its class, it has the features which make it

prominent in its class. It is one of those which possess clearly several

leading attributes; and thus, though we can not say of any one genus that

it _must_ be the type of the family, or of any one species that it _must_

be the type of the genus, we are still not wholly to seek; the type must

be connected by many affinities with most of the others of its group; it

must be near the centre of the crowd, and not one of the stragglers.”