accurate observation and comparison. It must be a mind stored with
general conceptions, previously acquired, of the sorts which bear
affinity to the subject of the particular inquiry. And much will also
depend on the natural strength and acquired culture of what has been
termed the scientific imagination; on the faculty possessed of mentally
arranging known elements into new combinations, such as have not yet
been observed in nature, though not contradictory to any known laws.
But the variety of intellectual habits, the purposes which they serve,
and the modes in which they may be fostered and cultivated, are
considerations belonging to the Art of Education: a subject far wider
than Logic, and which this treatise does not profess to discuss. Here,
therefore, the present chapter may properly close.
CHAPTER III.
OF NAMING, AS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION.
§ 1. It does not belong to the present undertaking to dwell on the
importance of language as a medium of human intercourse, whether for
purposes of sympathy or of information. Nor does our design admit of
more than a passing allusion to that great property of names, on which
their functions as an intellectual instrument are, in reality,
ultimately dependent; their potency as a means of forming, and of
riveting, associations among our other ideas: a subject on which an able
thinker[5] has thus written:--
"Names are impressions of sense, and as such take the strongest hold on
the mind, and of all other impressions can be most easily recalled and
retained in view. They therefore serve to give a point of attachment to
all the more volatile objects of thought and feeling. Impressions that
when passed might be dissipated for ever, are, by their connexion with
language, always within reach. Thoughts, of themselves, are perpetually
slipping out of the field of immediate mental vision; but the name
abides with us, and the utterance of it restores them in a moment. Words
are the custodiers of every product of mind less impressive than
themselves. All extensions of human knowledge, all new generalizations,
are fixed and spread, even unintentionally, by the use of words. The
child growing up learns, along with the vocables of his mother-tongue,
that things which he would have believed to be different, are, in
important points, the same. Without any formal instruction, the language
in which we grow up teaches us all the common philosophy of the age. It
directs us to observe and know things which we should have overlooked;
it supplies us with classifications ready made, by which things are
arranged (as far as the light of by-gone generations admits) with the
objects to which they bear the greatest total resemblance. The number of
general names in a language, and the degree of generality of those
names, afford a test of the knowledge of the era, and of the
intellectual insight which is the birthright of any one born into it."
It is not, however, of the functions of Names, considered generally,
that we have here to treat, but only of the manner and degree in which
they are directly instrumental to the investigation of truth; in other
words, to the process of induction.
§ 2. Observation and Abstraction, the operations which formed the
subject of the two foregoing chapters, are conditions indispensable to
induction; there can be no induction where they are not. It has been
imagined that Naming is also a condition equally indispensable. There
are thinkers who have held that language is not solely, according to a
phrase generally current, _an_ instrument of thought, but _the_
instrument: that names, or something equivalent to them, some species of
artificial signs, are necessary to reasoning; that there could be no
inference, and consequently no induction, without them. But if the
nature of reasoning was correctly explained in the earlier part of the
present work, this opinion must be held to be an exaggeration, though of
an important truth. If reasoning be from particulars to particulars, and
if it consist in recognising one fact as a mark of another, or a mark of
a mark of another, nothing is required to render reasoning possible,
except senses and association: senses to perceive that two facts are
conjoined; association, as the law by which one of those two facts
raises up the idea of the other.[6] For these mental phenomena, as well
as for the belief or expectation which follows, and by which we
recognise as having taken place, or as about to take place, that of
which we have perceived a mark, there is evidently no need of language.
And this inference of one particular fact from another is a case of
induction. It is of this sort of induction that brutes are capable: it
is in this shape that uncultivated minds make almost all their
inductions, and that we all do so in the cases in which familiar
experience forces our conclusions upon us without any active process of
inquiry on our part, and in which the belief or expectation follows the
suggestion of the evidence, with the promptitude and certainty of an
instinct.[7]
§ 3. But though inference of an inductive character is possible without
the use of signs, it could never, without them, be carried much beyond
the very simple cases which we have just described, and which form, in
all probability, the limit of the reasonings of those animals to whom
conventional language is unknown. Without language, or something
equivalent to it, there could only be as much reasoning from experience
as can take place without the aid of general propositions. Now, though
in strictness we may reason from past experience to a fresh individual
case without the intermediate stage of a general proposition, yet
without general propositions we should seldom remember what past
experience we have had, and scarcely ever what conclusions that
experience will warrant. The division of the inductive process into two
parts, the first ascertaining what is a mark of the given fact, the
second whether in the new case that mark exists, is natural, and
scientifically indispensable. It is, indeed, in a majority of cases,
rendered necessary by mere distance of time. The experience by which we
are to guide our judgments may be other people's experience, little of
which can be communicated to us otherwise than by language: when it is
our own, it is generally experience long past; unless, therefore, it
were recorded by means of artificial signs, little of it (except in
cases involving our intenser sensations or emotions, or the subjects of
our daily and hourly contemplation) would be retained in the memory. It
is hardly necessary to add, that when the inductive inference is of any
but the most direct and obvious nature--when it requires several
observations or experiments, in varying circumstances, and the
comparison of one of these with another--it is impossible to proceed a
step, without the artificial memory which words bestow. Without words,
we should, if we had often seen A and B in immediate and obvious
conjunction, expect B whenever we saw A; but to discover their
conjunction when not obvious, or to determine whether it is really
constant or only casual, and whether there is reason to expect it under
any given change of circumstances, is a process far too complex to be
performed without some contrivance to make our remembrance of our own
mental operations accurate. Now, language is such a contrivance. When
that instrument is called to our aid, the difficulty is reduced to that
of making our remembrance of the meaning of words accurate. This being
secured, whatever passes through our minds may be remembered accurately,
by putting it carefully into words, and committing the words either to
writing or to memory.
The function of Naming, and particularly of General Names, in Induction,
may be recapitulated as follows. Every inductive inference which is good
at all, is good for a whole class of cases: and, that the inference may
have any better warrant of its correctness than the mere clinging
together of two ideas, a process of experimentation and comparison is
necessary; in which the whole class of cases must be brought to view,
and some uniformity in the course of nature evolved and ascertained,
since the existence of such an uniformity is required as a
justification for drawing the inference in even a single case. This
uniformity, therefore, may be ascertained once for all; and if, being
ascertained, it can be remembered, it will serve as a formula for
making, in particular cases, all such inferences as the previous
experience will warrant. But we can only secure its being remembered, or
give ourselves even a chance of carrying in our memory any considerable
number of such uniformities, by registering them through the medium of
permanent signs; which (being, from the nature of the case, signs not of
an individual fact, but of an uniformity, that is, of an indefinite
number of facts similar to one another) are general signs; universals;
general names, and general propositions.
§ 4. And here I cannot omit to notice an oversight committed by some
eminent thinkers; who have said that the cause of our using general
names is the infinite multitude of individual objects, which, making it
impossible to have a name for each, compels us to make one name serve
for many. This is a very limited view of the function of general names.
Even if there were a name for every individual object, we should require
general names as much as we now do. Without them we could not express
the result of a single comparison, nor record any one of the
uniformities existing in nature; and should be hardly better off in
respect to Induction than if we had no names at all. With none but names
of individuals, (or in other words, proper names,) we might, by
pronouncing the name, suggest the idea of the object, but we could not
assert any proposition; except the unmeaning ones formed by predicating
two proper names one of another. It is only by means of general names
that we can convey any information, predicate any attribute, even of an
individual, much more of a class. Rigorously speaking we could get on
without any other general names than the abstract names of attributes;
all our propositions might be of the form "such an individual object
possesses such an attribute," or "such an attribute is always (or never)
conjoined with such another attribute." In fact, however, mankind have
always given general names to objects as well as attributes, and indeed
before attributes: but the general names given to objects imply
attributes, derive their whole meaning from attributes; and are chiefly
useful as the language by means of which we predicate the attributes
which they connote.
It remains to be considered what principles are to be adhered to in
giving general names, so that these names, and the general propositions
in which they fill a place, may conduce most to the purposes of
Induction.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE REQUISITES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF
DEFINITION.
§ 1. In order that we may possess a language perfectly suitable for the
investigation and expression of general truths, there are two principal,
and several minor, requisites. The first is, that every general name
should have a meaning, steadily fixed, and precisely determined. When,
by the fulfilment of this condition, such names as we possess are fitted
for the due performance of their functions, the next requisite, and the
second in order of importance, is that we should possess a name wherever
one is needed; wherever there is anything to be designated by it, which
it is of importance to express.
The former of these requisites is that to which our attention will be
exclusively directed in the present chapter.
§ 2. Every general name, then, must have a certain and knowable meaning.
Now the meaning (as has so often been explained) of a general
connotative name, resides in the connotation; in the attribute on
account of which, and to express which, the name is given. Thus, the
name animal being given to all things which possess the attributes of
sensation and voluntary motion, the word connotes those attributes
exclusively, and they constitute the whole of its meaning. If the name
be abstract, its denotation is the same with the connotation of the
corresponding concrete: it designates directly the attribute, which the
concrete term implies. To give a precise meaning to general names is,
then, to fix with steadiness the attribute or attributes connoted by
each concrete general name, and denoted by the corresponding abstract.
Since abstract names, in the order of their creation, do not precede
but follow concrete ones, as is proved by the etymological fact that
they are almost always derived from them; we may consider their meaning
as determined by, and dependent on, the meaning of their concrete: and
thus the problem of giving a distinct meaning to general language, is
all included in that of giving a precise connotation to all concrete
general names.
This is not difficult in the case of new names; of the technical terms
created by scientific inquirers for the purposes of science or art. But
when a name is in common use, the difficulty is greater; the problem in
this case not being that of choosing a convenient connotation for the
name, but of ascertaining and fixing the connotation with which it is
already used. That this can ever be a matter of doubt, is a sort of
paradox. But the vulgar (including in that term all who have not
accurate habits of thought) seldom know exactly what assertion they
intend to make, what common property they mean to express, when they
apply the same name to a number of different things. All which the name
expresses with them, when they predicate it of an object, is a confused
feeling of resemblance between that object and some of the other things
which they have been accustomed to denote by the name. They have applied
the name Stone to various objects previously seen; they see a new
object, which appears to them somewhat like the former, and they call it
a stone, without asking themselves in what respect it is like, or what
mode or degree of resemblance the best authorities, or even they
themselves, require as a warrant for using the name. This rough general
impression of resemblance is, however, made up of particular
circumstances of resemblance; and into these it is the business of the
logician to analyse it; to ascertain what points of resemblance among
the different things commonly called by the name, have produced in the
common mind this vague feeling of likeness; have given to the things the
similarity of aspect, which has made them a class, and has caused the
same name to be bestowed upon them.
But though general names are imposed by the vulgar without any more
definite connotation than that of a vague resemblance; general
propositions come in time to be made, in which predicates are applied to
those names, that is, general assertions are made concerning the _whole_
of the things which are denoted by the name. And since by each of these
propositions some attribute, more or less precisely conceived, is of
course predicated, the ideas of these various attributes thus become
associated with the name, and in a sort of uncertain way it comes to
connote them; there is a hesitation to apply the name in any new case in
which any of the attributes familiarly predicated of the class do not
exist. And thus, to common minds, the propositions which they are in the
habit of hearing or uttering concerning a class, make up in a loose way
a sort of connotation for the class-name. Let us take, for instance, the
word Civilized. How few could be found, even among the most educated
persons, who would undertake to say exactly what the term Civilized
connotes. Yet there is a feeling in the minds of all who use it, that
they are using it with a meaning; and this meaning is made up, in a
confused manner, of everything which they have heard or read that
civilized men, or civilized communities, are, or may be expected to be.
It is at this stage, probably, in the progress of a concrete name, that
the corresponding abstract name generally comes into use. Under the
notion that the concrete name must of course convey a meaning, or in
other words, that there is some property common to all things which it
denotes, people give a name to this common property; from the concrete
Civilized, they form the abstract Civilization. But since most people
have never compared the different things which are called by the
concrete name, in such a manner as to ascertain what properties these
things have in common, or whether they have any; each is thrown back
upon the marks by which he himself has been accustomed to be guided in
his application of the term: and these, being merely vague hearsays and
current phrases, are not the same in any two persons, nor in the same
person at different times. Hence the word (as Civilization, for example)
which professes to be the designation of the unknown common property,
conveys scarcely to any two minds the same idea. No two persons agree in
the things they predicate of it; and when it is itself predicated of
anything, no other person knows, nor does the speaker himself know with
precision, what he means to assert. Many other words which could be
named, as the word _honour_, or the word _gentleman_, exemplify this
uncertainty still more strikingly.
It needs scarcely be observed, that general propositions of which no one
can tell exactly what they assert, cannot possibly have been brought to
the test of a correct induction. Whether a name is to be used as an
instrument of thinking, or as a means of communicating the result of
thought, it is imperative to determine exactly the attribute or
attributes which it is to express: to give it, in short, a fixed and
ascertained connotation.
§ 3. It would, however, be a complete misunderstanding of the proper
office of a logician in dealing with terms already in use, if we were to
think that because a name has not at present an ascertained connotation,
it is competent to any one to give it such a connotation at his own
choice. The meaning of a term actually in use is not an arbitrary
quantity to be fixed, but an unknown quantity to be sought.
In the first place, it is obviously desirable to avail ourselves, as far
as possible, of the associations already connected with the name; not
enjoining the employment of it in a manner which conflicts with all
previous habits, and especially not so as to require the rupture of
those strongest of all associations between names, which are created by
familiarity with propositions in which they are predicated of one
another. A philosopher would have little chance of having his example
followed, if he were to give such a meaning to his terms as should
require us to call the North American Indians a civilized people, or the
higher classes in France or England savages; or to say that civilized
people live by hunting, and savages by agriculture. Were there no other
reason, the extreme difficulty of effecting so complete a revolution in
speech would be more than a sufficient one. The endeavour should be,
that all generally received propositions into which the term enters,
should be at least as true after its meaning is fixed, as they were
before; and that the concrete name, therefore, should not receive such a
connotation as shall prevent it from denoting things which, in common
language, it is currently affirmed of. The fixed and precise connotation
which it receives, should not be in deviation from, but in agreement (as
far as it goes) with, the vague and fluctuating connotation which the
term already had.
To fix the connotation of a concrete name, or the denotation of the
corresponding abstract, is to define the name. When this can be done
without rendering any received assertions inadmissible, the name can be
defined in accordance with its received use, which is vulgarly called
defining not the name but the thing. What is meant by the improper
expression of defining a thing, (or rather a class of things--for nobody
talks of defining an individual,) is to define the name, subject to the
condition that it shall denote those things. This, of course, supposes a
comparison of the things, feature by feature and property by property,
to ascertain what attributes they agree in; and not unfrequently an
operation strictly inductive, for the purpose of ascertaining some
unobvious agreement, which is the cause of the obvious agreements.
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,[8] 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 endeavoured
to throw light on their subject by defining _organization_, or some
similar term." Questions of the same nature are still open 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 endeavour 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, "an 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 an 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. An 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 proportion 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,[9] 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 everything 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 connexion 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_,[10] "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 recognise,
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."[11]
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:[12]--
"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 endeavoured 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 had 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:"[13] 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 endeavouring 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."[14]
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
cannot but feel, with him, considerable doubt, whether the word
beautiful connotes the same property when we speak of a beautiful
colour, 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 cannot 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 towards 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 anything 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 recognised 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 unanalysed 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
anything 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 cannot 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 cannot 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 skilfully 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 recognised 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 recognising 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 towards 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 favourite
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 recognised 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 endeavoured, and had
succeeded in the endeavour, 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 anything 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 coexistence 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 synonymes. 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 labour, in
another without manual labour, 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
speciality of circumstances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any
other case, and the speciality 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 favourite 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 worshipper 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 everybody 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 semibarbarous 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 engrafted 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 is 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.[15]
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, travellers, 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 analysed 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 recognised 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_,[16] "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 [Greek: Arsenikon], 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 ([Greek: opos], _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 [Greek: elaunô], _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); afterwards 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 anything 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 [Greek: Theos], 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 [Greek: poiêtês], 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 ([Greek:
physikos], 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
anything 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
favourable 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 cannot _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 afterwards 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 unmistakeable 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 cannot do better than quote from
Dr. Whewell[17] 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 colour 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-grey_. It might, perhaps, be supposed that, in the first
example, the term _apple_, referring to so familiar an object,
sufficiently suggests the colour 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 connexion as in 'apple-green,' or a casual
one as in 'French-grey.' In order to derive due advantage from technical
terms of this 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 colour 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 colour 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, cannot 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 cannot 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[18] 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 dreamt 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 enclosing the grain, of
whatever kind it be, fruit, nut, pod, &c. 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_, &c., 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: Colour by means of a classified scale of colours.... This was
done with most precision by Werner, and his scale of colours 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 towards 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_ + &c., 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 clenches 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 cannot 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 anything 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 recognise a horse, agree in a
great number of other properties, as we know, and, it cannot 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 anything else, except the qualities common to all horses,
and whatever may be the causes or effects of that particular colour.
On the principle that there should be a name for everything 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 _infimæ 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 towards 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 an 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
cannot, 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 cannot 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 recognise 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 contained 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 of 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
coextensively 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 analysed 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. And 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 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 anything 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, cannot 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 cannot 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 cannot 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 form of the process. 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 recognising 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 cannot. 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 cannot constitute any one
class properly, except in reference to a general division of the whole
of nature; we cannot 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
anything 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 look-out 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.