Thus there is a perpetual oscillation in spiritual truths, and in spiritual doctrines of any significance, even when not truths. Their meaning is almost always in a process either of being lost or of being recovered. Whoever has attended to the history of the more serious convictions of mankind-of the opinions by which the general conduct of their lives is, or as they conceive ought to be, more especially regulated-is aware that even when recognizing verbally the same doctrines, they attach to them at different periods a greater or a less quantity, and even a different kind of meaning. The words in their original acceptation connoted, and the propositions expressed, a complication of outward facts and inward feelings, to different portions of which the general mind is more particularly alive in different generations of mankind. To common minds, only that portion of the meaning is in each generation suggested, of which that generation possesses the counterpart in its own habitual experience. But the words and propositions lie ready to suggest to any mind duly prepared the remainder of the meaning. Such individual minds are almost always to be found; and the lost meaning, revived by them, again by degrees works its way into the general mind.
The arrival of this salutary reaction may, however, be materially retarded by the shallow conceptions and incautious proceedings of mere logicians.
It sometimes happens that toward the close of the downward period, when the words have lost part of their significance, and have not yet begun to recover it, persons arise whose leading and favorite idea is the importance of clear conceptions and precise thought, and the necessity, therefore, of definite language. These persons, in examining the old formulas, easily perceive that words are used in them without a meaning; and if they are not the sort of persons who are capable of rediscovering the lost signification, they naturally enough dismiss the formula, and define the name without reference to it. In so doing they fasten down the name to what it connotes in common use at the time when it conveys the smallest quantity of meaning; and introduce the practice of employing it, consistently and uniformly, according to that connotation. The word in this way acquires an extent of denotation far beyond what it had before; it becomes extended to many things to which it was previously, in appearance capriciously, refused. Of the propositions in which it was formerly used, those which were true in virtue of the forgotten part of its meaning are now, by the clearer light which the definition diffuses, seen not to be true according to the definition; which, however, is the recognized and sufficiently correct expression of all that is perceived to be in the mind of any one by whom the term is used at the present day. The ancient formulas are consequently treated as prejudices; and people are no longer taught as before, though not to understand them, yet to believe that there is truth in them. They no longer remain in the general mind surrounded by respect, and ready at any time to suggest their original meaning. Whatever truths they contain are not only, in these circumstances, rediscovered far more slowly, but, when rediscovered, the prejudice with which novelties are regarded is now, in some degree at least, against them, instead of being on their side.
An example may make these remarks more intelligible. In all ages, except where moral speculation has been silenced by outward compulsion, or where the feelings which prompt to it still continue to be satisfied by the traditional doctrines of an established faith, one of the subjects which have most occupied the minds of thinking persons is the inquiry, What is virtue? or, What is a virtuous character? Among the different theories on the subject which have, at different times, grown up and obtained partial currency, every one of which reflected as in the clearest mirror the express image of the age which gave it birth; there was one, according to which virtue consists in a correct calculation of our own personal interests, either in this world only, or also in another. To make this theory plausible, it was of course necessary that the only beneficial actions which people in general were accustomed to see, or were therefore accustomed to praise, should be such as were, or at least might without contradicting obvious facts be supposed to be, the result of a prudential regard to self-interest; so that the words really connoted no more, in common acceptation, than was set down in the definition.
Suppose, now, that the partisans of this theory had contrived to introduce a consistent and undeviating use of the term according to this definition.
Suppose that they had seriously endeavored, and had succeeded in the endeavor, to banish the word disinterestedness from the language; had obtained the disuse of all expressions attaching odium to selfishness or commendation to self-sacrifice, or which implied generosity or kindness to be any thing but doing a benefit in order to receive a greater personal advantage in return. Need we say that this abrogation of the old formulas for the sake of preserving clear ideas and consistency of thought, would have been a great evil? while the very inconsistency incurred by the co-existence of the formulas with philosophical opinions which seemed to condemn them as absurdities, operated as a stimulus to the re-examination of the subject and thus the very doctrines originating in the oblivion into which a part of the truth had fallen, were rendered indirectly, but powerfully, instrumental to its revival.
The doctrine of the Coleridge school, that the language of any people among whom culture is of old date, is a sacred deposit, the property of all ages, and which no one age should consider itself empowered to alter-borders indeed, as thus expressed, on an extravagance; but it is grounded on a truth, frequently overlooked by that class of logicians who think more of having a clear than of having a comprehensive meaning; and who perceive that every age is adding to the truths which it has received from its predecessors, but fail to see that a counter process of losing truths already possessed, is also constantly going on, and requiring the most sedulous attention to counteract it. Language is the depository of the accumulated body of experience to which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to come.
We have no right to prevent ourselves from transmitting to posterity a larger portion of this inheritance than we may ourselves have profited by.
However much we may be able to improve on the conclusions of our forefathers, we ought to be careful not inadvertently to let any of their premises slip through our fingers. It may be good to alter the meaning of a word, but it is bad to let any part of the meaning drop. Whoever seeks to introduce a more correct use of a term with which important associations are connected, should be required to possess an accurate acquaintance with the history of the particular word, and of the opinions which in different stages of its progress it served to express. To be qualified to define the name, we must know all that has ever been known of the properties of the class of objects which are, or originally were, denoted by it. For if we give it a meaning according to which any proposition will be false which has ever been generally held to be true, it is incumbent on us to be sure that we know and have considered all which those who believed the proposition understood by it.
Chapter V.
On The Natural History Of The Variations In The Meaning Of Terms.
-- 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in common use are liable to shift their connotation. The truth is, that the connotation of such words is perpetually varying; as might be expected from the manner in which words in common use acquire their connotation. A technical term, invented for purposes of art or science, has, from the first, the connotation given to it by its inventor; but a name which is in every one's mouth before any one thinks of defining it, derives its connotation only from the circumstances which are habitually brought to mind when it is pronounced. Among these circumstances, the properties common to the things denoted by the name, have naturally a principal place; and would have the sole place, if language were regulated by convention rather than by custom and accident. But besides these common properties, which if they exist are _certainly_ present whenever the name is employed, any other circumstance may _casually_ be found along with it, so frequently as to become associated with it in the same manner, and as strongly, as the common properties themselves. In proportion as this association forms itself, people give up using the name in cases in which those casual circumstances do not exist. They prefer using some other name, or the same name with some adjunct, rather than employ an expression which will call up an idea they do not want to excite. The circumstance originally casual, thus becomes regularly a part of the connotation of the word.
It is this continual incorporation of circumstances originally accidental, into the permanent signification of words, which is the cause that there are so few exact synonyms. It is this also which renders the dictionary meaning of a word, by universal remark so imperfect an exponent of its real meaning. The dictionary meaning is marked out in a broad, blunt way, and probably includes all that was originally necessary for the correct employment of the term; but in process of time so many collateral associations adhere to words, that whoever should attempt to use them with no other guide than the dictionary, would confound a thousand nice distinctions and subtle shades of meaning which dictionaries take no account of; as we notice in the use of a language in conversation or writing by a foreigner not thoroughly master of it. The history of a word, by showing the causes which determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment than any definition; for definitions can only show its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its history may show the law by which the succession was produced. The word _gentleman_, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. From this it came by degrees to connote all such qualities or adventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of that rank. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar acceptations it means any one who lives without labor, in another without manual labor, and in its more elevated signification it has in every age signified the conduct, character, habits, and outward appearance, in whomsoever found, which, according to the ideas of that age, belonged or were expected to belong to persons born and educated in a high social position.
It continually happens that of two words, whose dictionary meanings are either the same or very slightly different, one will be the proper word to use in one set of circumstances, another in another, without its being possible to show how the custom of so employing them originally grew up.
The accident that one of the words was used and not the other on a particular occasion or in a particular social circle, will be sufficient to produce so strong an association between the word and some specialty of circumstances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any other case, and the specialty becomes part of its signification. The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there.
An instance in point is the remarkable change which, in the English language at least, has taken place in the signification of the word _loyalty_. That word originally meant in English, as it still means in the language from whence it came, fair, open dealing, and fidelity to engagements; in that sense the quality it expressed was part of the ideal chivalrous or knightly character. By what process, in England, the term became restricted to the single case of fidelity to the throne, I am not sufficiently versed in the history of courtly language to be able to pronounce. The interval between a _loyal chevalier_ and a loyal subject is certainly great. I can only suppose that the word was, at some period, the favorite term at court to express fidelity to the oath of allegiance; until at length those who wished to speak of any other, and as it was probably deemed, inferior sort of fidelity, either did not venture to use so dignified a term, or found it convenient to employ some other in order to avoid being misunderstood.
-- 2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, at first casually incorporated into the connotation of a word which originally had no reference to it, in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and becomes not merely a part of the connotation, but the whole of it. This is exemplified in the word pagan, _paganus_; which originally, as its etymology imports, was equivalent to _villager_; the inhabitant of a _pagus_, or village. At a particular era in the extension of Christianity over the Roman empire, the adherents of the old religion, and the villagers or country people, were nearly the same body of individuals, the inhabitants of the towns having been earliest converted; as in our own day, and at all times, the greater activity of social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients of new opinions and modes, while old habits and prejudices linger longest among the country people; not to mention that the towns were more immediately under the direct influence of the Government, which at that time had embraced Christianity. From this casual coincidence, the word _paganus_ carried with it, and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea of a worshiper of the ancient divinities; until at length it suggested that idea so forcibly that people who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided using the word. But when _paganus_ had come to connote heathenism, the very unimportant circumstance, with reference to that fact, of the place of residence, was soon disregarded in the employment of the word. As there was seldom any occasion for making separate assertions respecting heathens who lived in the country, there was no need for a separate word to denote them; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to mean that exclusively.
A case still more familiar to most readers is that of the word _villain_ or _villein_. This term, as every body knows, had in the Middle Ages a connotation as strictly defined as a word could have, being the proper legal designation for those persons who were the subjects of the less onerous forms of feudal bondage. The scorn of the semi-barbarous military aristocracy for these their abject dependants, rendered the act of likening any person to this class of people a mark of the greatest contumely; the same scorn led them to ascribe to the same people all manner of hateful qualities, which doubtless also, in the degrading situation in which they were held, were often not unjustly imputed to them. These circumstances combined to attach to the term villain ideas of crime and guilt, in so forcible a manner that the application of the epithet even to those to whom it legally belonged became an affront, and was abstained from whenever no affront was intended. From that time guilt was part of the connotation; and soon became the whole of it, since mankind were not prompted by any urgent motive to continue making a distinction in their language between bad men of servile station and bad men of any other rank in life.
These and similar instances in which the original signification of a term is totally lost-another and an entirely distinct meaning being first ingrafted upon the former, and finally substituted for it-afford examples of the double movement which is always taking place in language: two counter-movements, one of Generalization, by which words are perpetually losing portions of their connotation, and becoming of less meaning and more general acceptation; the other of Specialization, by which other, or even these same words, are continually taking on fresh connotation; acquiring additional meaning by being restricted in their employment to a part only of the occasions on which they might properly be used before.
This double movement is of sufficient importance in the natural history of language (to which natural history the artificial modifications ought always to have some degree of reference), to justify our dwelling a little longer on the nature of the twofold phenomenon, and the causes to which it owes its existence.
-- 3. To begin with the movement of generalization. It might seem unnecessary to dwell on the changes in the meaning of names which take place merely from their being used ignorantly, by persons who, not having properly mastered the received connotation of a word, apply it in a looser and wider sense than belongs to it. This, however, is a real source of alterations in the language; for when a word, from being often employed in cases where one of the qualities which it connotes does not exist, ceases to suggest that quality with certainty, then even those who are under no mistake as to the proper meaning of the word, prefer expressing that meaning in some other way, and leave the original word to its fate. The word 'Squire, as standing for an owner of a landed estate; Parson, as denoting not the rector of the parish, but clergymen in general; Artist, to denote only a painter or sculptor; are cases in point. Such cases give a clear insight into the process of the degeneration of languages in periods of history when literary culture was suspended; and we are now in danger of experiencing a similar evil through the superficial extension of the same culture. So many persons without any thing deserving the name of education have become writers by profession, that written language may almost be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verb _transpire_ formerly conveyed very expressively its correct meaning, viz., to _become known_ through unnoticed channels-to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapor or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonym of _to happen_: "the events which have _transpired_ in the Crimea," meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the dispatches of noblemen and viceroys; and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense. In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown to genuine English. The use of "aggravating" for "provoking," in my boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers, and into many books; and when the word is used in its proper sense, as when writers on criminal law speak of aggravating and extenuating circumstances, their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood. It is a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing one's self clearly with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the word _alone_ as an adverb, _only_ not being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ignorance. A man will say "to which I am not alone bound by honor but also by law," unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he is _not alone_ bound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly, if any one said, "I am not alone responsible for this," he was understood to mean (what alone his words mean in correct English), that he is not the sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be confused between that and two other meanings: that he is not _only responsible_ but something more; or that he is responsible _not only for this_ but for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson's none could not say, "I will not die alone," lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die but do something else.
The blunder of writing _predicate_ for _predict_ has become so widely diffused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical term "to eliminate" is undergoing a similar destruction. All who are acquainted either with the proper use of the word or with its etymology know that to eliminate a thing is to thrust it out: but those who know nothing about it, except that it is a fine-looking phrase, use it in a sense precisely the reverse, to denote, not turning any thing out, but bringing it in. They talk of _eliminating_ some truth, or other useful result, from a mass of details.(220) A similar permanent deterioration in the language is in danger of being produced by the blunders of translators. The writers of telegrams, and the foreign correspondents of newspapers, have gone on so long translating _demander_ by "to demand,"
without a suspicion that it means only to ask, that (the context generally showing that nothing else is meant) English readers are gradually associating the English word demand with simple asking, thus leaving the language without a term to express a demand in its proper sense. In like manner, "transaction," the French word for a compromise, is translated into the English word transaction; while, curiously enough, the inverse change is taking place in France, where the word "compromis" has lately begun to be used for expressing the same idea. If this continues, the two countries will have exchanged phrases.
Independently, however, of the generalization of names through their ignorant misuse, there is a tendency in the same direction consistently with a perfect knowledge of their meaning; arising from the fact, that the number of things known to us, and of which we feel a desire to speak, multiply faster than the names for them. Except on subjects for which there has been constructed a scientific terminology, with which unscientific persons do not meddle, great difficulty is generally found in bringing a new name into use; and independently of that difficulty, it is natural to prefer giving to a new object a name which at least expresses its resemblance to something already known, since by predicating of it a name entirely new we at first convey no information. In this manner the name of a species often becomes the name of a genus; as _salt_, for example, or _oil_; the former of which words originally denoted only the muriate of soda, the latter, as its etymology indicates, only olive-oil; but which now denote large and diversified classes of substances resembling these in some of their qualities, and connote only those common qualities, instead of the whole of the distinctive properties of olive-oil and sea-salt. The words _glass_ and _soap_ are used by modern chemists in a similar manner, to denote genera of which the substances vulgarly so called are single species. And it often happens, as in those instances, that the term keeps its special signification in addition to its more general one, and becomes ambiguous, that is, two names instead of one.
These changes, by which words in ordinary use become more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take place in a still greater degree with the words which express the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, travelers, and in general those who speak or write concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are not familiarly acquainted, are the great agents in this modification of language. The vocabulary of all except unusually instructed as well as thinking persons, is, on such subjects, eminently scanty. They have a certain small set of words to which they are accustomed, and which they employ to express phenomena the most heterogeneous, because they have never sufficiently analyzed the facts to which those words correspond in their own country, to have attached perfectly definite ideas to the words. The first English conquerors of Bengal, for example, carried with them the phrase _landed proprietor_ into a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of things; to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right, from another because he had not an absolute right they took away all right, drove whole classes of people to ruin and despair, filled the country with banditti, created a feeling that nothing was secure, and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization of society which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders. Yet the usage of persons capable of so gross a misapprehension determines the meaning of language; and the words they thus misuse grow in generality, until the instructed are obliged to acquiesce; and to employ those words (first freeing them from vagueness by giving them a definite connotation) as generic terms, subdividing the genera into species.
-- 4. While the more rapid growth of ideas than of names thus creates a perpetual necessity for making the same names serve, even if imperfectly, on a greater number of occasions; a counter-operation is going on, by which names become on the contrary restricted to fewer occasions, by taking on, as it were, additional connotation, from circumstances not originally included in the meaning, but which have become connected with it in the mind by some accidental cause. We have seen above, in the words _pagan_ and _villain_, remarkable examples of the specialization of the meaning of words from casual associations, as well as of the generalization of it in a new direction, which often follows.
Similar specializations are of frequent occurrence in the history even of scientific nomenclature. "It is by no means uncommon," says Dr. Paris, in his _Pharmacologia_,(221) "to find a word which is used to express general characters subsequently become the name of a specific substance in which such characters are predominant; and we shall find that some important anomalies in nomenclature may be thus explained. The term ??se?????, 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 (?p??, _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 ??a???, _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 _faex_, the grounds or settlement of _any_ liquor); afterward it was applied to Starch, which is deposited in this manner by agitating the flour of wheat in water; and, lastly, it has been applied to a peculiar vegetable principle, which, like starch, is insoluble in cold, but completely soluble in boiling water, with which it forms a gelatinous solution. This indefinite meaning of the word _fecula_ has created numerous mistakes in pharmaceutic chemistry; Elaterium, for instance, is said to be _fecula_, and, in the original sense of the word, it is properly so called, inasmuch as it is procured from a vegetable juice by spontaneous subsidence, but in the limited and modern acceptation of the term it conveys an erroneous idea; for instead of the active principle of the juice residing in _fecula_, it is a peculiar proximate principle, _sui generis_, to which I have ventured to bestow the name of _Elatin_. For the same reason, much doubt and obscurity involve the meaning of the word _Extract_, because it is applied _generally_ to any substance obtained by the evaporation of a vegetable solution, and _specifically_ to a peculiar proximate principle, possessed of certain characters, by which it is distinguished from every other elementary body."
A generic term is always liable to become thus limited to a single species, or even individual, if people have occasion to think and speak of that individual or species much oftener than of any thing else which is contained in the genus. Thus by cattle, a stage-coachman will understand horses; beasts, in the language of agriculturists, stands for oxen; and birds, with some sportsmen, for partridges only. The law of language which operates in these trivial instances is the very same in conformity to which the terms Te??, 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 p???t??, 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 (f?s????, or naturalist) became, in England, synonymous with a healer of diseases, because until a comparatively late period medical practitioners were the only naturalists. _Clerc_, or clericus, a scholar, came to signify an ecclesiastic, because the clergy were for many centuries the only scholars.
Of all ideas, however, the most liable to cling by association to any thing with which they have ever been connected by proximity, are those of our pleasures and pains, or of the things which we habitually contemplate as sources of our pleasures or pains. The additional connotation, therefore, which a word soonest and most readily takes on, is that of agreeableness or painfulness, in their various kinds and degrees; of being a good or bad thing; desirable or to be avoided; an object of hatred, of dread, contempt, admiration, hope, or love. Accordingly there is hardly a single name, expressive of any moral or social fact calculated to call forth strong affections either of a favorable or of a hostile nature, which does not carry with it decidedly and irresistibly a connotation of those strong affections, or, at the least, of approbation or censure; insomuch that to employ those names in conjunction with others by which the contrary sentiments were expressed, would produce the effect of a paradox, or even a contradiction in terms. The baneful influence of a connotation thus acquired, on the prevailing habits of thought, especially in morals and politics, has been well pointed out on many occasions by Bentham. It gives rise to the fallacy of "question-begging names." The very property which we are inquiring whether a thing possesses or not, has become so associated with the name of the thing as to be part of its meaning, insomuch that by merely uttering the name we assume the point which was to be made out; one of the most frequent sources of apparently self-evident propositions.
Without any further multiplication of examples to illustrate the changes which usage is continually making in the signification of terms, I shall add, as a practical rule, that the logician, not being able to prevent such transformations, should submit to them with a good grace when they are irrevocably effected, and if a definition is necessary, define the word according to its new meaning; retaining the former as a second signification, if it is needed, and if there is any chance of being able to preserve it either in the language of philosophy or in common use.
Logicians can not _make_ the meaning of any but scientific terms; that of all other words is made by the collective human race. But logicians can ascertain clearly what it is which, working obscurely, has guided the general mind to a particular employment of a name; and when they have found this, they can clothe it in such distinct and permanent terms, that mankind shall see the meaning which before they only felt, and shall not suffer it to be afterward forgotten or misapprehended.
Chapter VI.
The Principles Of A Philosophical Language Further Considered.
-- 1. We have, thus far, considered only one of the requisites of a language adapted for the investigation of truth; that its terms shall each of them convey a determinate and unmistakable meaning. There are, however, as we have already remarked, other requisites; some of them important only in the second degree, but one which is fundamental, and barely yields in point of importance, if it yields at all, to the quality which we have already discussed at so much length. That the language may be fitted for its purposes, not only should every word perfectly express its meaning, but there should be no important meaning without its word. Whatever we have occasion to think of often, and for scientific purposes, ought to have a name appropriated to it.
This requisite of philosophical language may be considered under three different heads; that number of separate conditions being involved in it.
-- 2. First, there ought to be all such names, as are needful for making such a record of individual observations that the words of the record shall exactly show what fact it is which has been observed. In other words, there should be an accurate Descriptive Terminology.
The only things which we can observe directly being our own sensations, or other feelings, a complete descriptive language would be one in which there should be a name for every variety of elementary sensation or feeling. Combinations of sensations or feelings may always be described, if we have a name for each of the elementary feelings which compose them; but brevity of description, and clearness (which often depends very much on brevity), are greatly promoted by giving distinctive names not to the elements alone, but also to all combinations which are of frequent recurrence. On this occasion I can not do better than quote from Dr.
Whewell(222) some of the excellent remarks which he has made on this important branch of our subject.
"The meaning of [descriptive] technical terms can be fixed in the first instance only by convention, and can be made intelligible only by presenting to the senses that which the terms are to signify. The knowledge of a color by its name can only be taught through the eye. No description can convey to a hearer what we mean by _apple-green_ or _French gray_. It might, perhaps, be supposed that, in the first example, the term _apple_, referring to so familiar an object, sufficiently suggests the color intended. But it may easily be seen that this is not true; for apples are of many different hues of green, and it is only by a conventional selection that we can appropriate the term to one special shade. When this appropriation is once made, the term refers to the sensation, and not to the parts of the term; for these enter into the compound merely as a help to the memory, whether the suggestion be a natural connection as in 'apple-green,' or a casual one as in 'French gray.' In order to derive due advantage from technical terms of the kind, they must be associated _immediately_ with the perception to which they belong; and not connected with it through the vague usages of common language. The memory must retain the sensation; and the technical word must be understood as directly as the most familiar word, and more distinctly. When we find such terms as _tin-white_ or _pinchbeck-brown_, the metallic color so denoted ought to start up in our memory without delay or search.
"This, which it is most important to recollect with respect to the simpler properties of bodies, as color and form, is no less true with respect to more compound notions. In all cases the term is fixed to a peculiar meaning by convention; and the student, in order to use the word, must be completely familiar with the convention, so that he has no need to frame conjectures from the word itself. Such conjectures would always be insecure, and often erroneous. Thus the term _papilionaceous_ applied to a flower is employed to indicate, not only a resemblance to a butterfly, but a resemblance arising from five petals of a certain-peculiar shape and arrangement; and even if the resemblance were much stronger than it is in such cases, yet, if it were produced in a different way, as, for example, by one petal, or two only, instead of a 'standard,' two 'wings,' and a 'keel' consisting of two parts more or less united into one, we should be no longer justified in speaking of it as a 'papilionaceous' flower."
When, however, the thing named is, as in this last case, a combination of simple sensations, it is not necessary, in order to learn the meaning of the word, that the student should refer back to the sensations themselves; it may be communicated to him through the medium of other words; the terms, in short, may be defined. But the names of elementary sensations, or elementary feelings of any sort, can not be defined; nor is there any mode of making their signification known but by making the learner experience the sensation, or referring him, through some known mark, to his remembrance of having experienced it before. Hence it is only the impressions on the outward senses, or those inward feelings which are connected in a very obvious and uniform manner with outward objects, that are really susceptible of an exact descriptive language. The countless variety of sensations which arise, for instance, from disease, or from peculiar physiological states, it would be in vain to attempt to name; for as no one can judge whether the sensation I have is the same with his, the name can not have, to us two, real community of meaning. The same may be said, to a considerable extent, of purely mental feelings. But in some of the sciences which are conversant with external objects, it is scarcely possible to surpass the perfection to which this quality of a philosophical language has been carried.
"The formation(223) of an exact and extensive descriptive language for botany has been executed with a degree of skill and felicity, which, before it was attained, could hardly have been dreamed of as attainable.
Every part of a plant has been named; and the form of every part, even the most minute, has had a large assemblage of descriptive terms appropriated to it, by means of which the botanist can convey and receive knowledge of form and structure, as exactly as if each minute part were presented to him vastly magnified. This acquisition was part of the Linnaean 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 Linnaeus who really created and fixed this botanical language, and this is his fairest claim to glory, for by this fixation of language he has shed clearness and precision over all parts of the science.'
"It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the terms of botany. The fundamental ones have been gradually introduced, as the parts of plants were more carefully and minutely examined. Thus the flower was necessarily distinguished into the _calyx_, the _corolla_, the _stamens_, and the _pistils_; the sections of the corolla were termed _petals_ by Columna; those of the calyx were called _sepals_ by Necker. Sometimes terms of greater generality were devised; as _perianth_, to include the calyx and corolla, whether one or both of these were present; _pericarp_, for the part inclosing the grain, of whatever kind it be, fruit, nut, pod, etc. And it may easily be imagined, that descriptive terms may, by definition and combination, become very numerous and distinct. Thus leaves may be called _pinnatifid_, _pinnatipartite_, _pinnatisect_, _pinnatilobate_, _palmatifid_, _palmatipartite_, etc., and each of these words designates different combinations of the modes and extent of the divisions of the leaf with the divisions of its outline. In some cases, arbitrary numerical relations are introduced into the definition: thus, a leaf is called _bilobate_, when it is divided into two parts by a notch; but if the notch go to the middle of its length, it is _bifid_; if it go near the base of the leaf, it is _bipartite_; if to the base, it is _bisect_. Thus, too, a pod of a cruciferous plant is a _siliqua_, if it is four times as long as it is broad, but if it be shorter than this it is a _silicula_. Such terms being established, the form of the very complex leaf or frond of a fern (Hymenophyllum Wilsoni) is exactly conveyed by the following phrase: 'fronds rigid pinnate, pinnae recurved subunilateral, pinnatifid, the segments linear undivided or bifid, spinuloso-serrate.'
"Other characters, as well as form, are conveyed with the like precision: Color by means of a classified scale of colors.... This was done with most precision by Werner, and his scale of colors is still the most usual standard of naturalists. Werner also introduced a more exact terminology with regard to other characters which are important in mineralogy, as lustre, hardness. But Mohs improved upon this step by giving a numerical scale of hardness, in which talc is 1, gypsum 2, calc spar 3, and so on.... Some properties, as specific gravity, by their definition give at once a numerical measure; and others, as crystalline form, require a very considerable array of mathematical calculation and reasoning, to point out their relations and gradations."
-- 3. Thus far of Descriptive Terminology, or of the language requisite for placing on record our observation of individual instances. But when we proceed from this to Induction, or rather to that comparison of observed instances which is the preparatory step toward it, we stand in need of an additional and a different sort of general names.
Whenever, for purposes of Induction, we find it necessary to introduce (in Dr. Whewell's phraseology) some new general conception; that is, whenever the comparison of a set of phenomena leads to the recognition in them of some common circumstance, which, our attention not having been directed to it on any former occasion, is to us a new phenomenon; it is of importance that this new conception, or this new result of abstraction, should have a name appropriated to it; especially if the circumstance it involves be one which leads to many consequences, or which is likely to be found also in other classes of phenomena. No doubt, in most cases of the kind, the meaning might be conveyed by joining together several words already in use. But when a thing has to be often spoken of, there are more reasons than the saving of time and space, for speaking of it in the most concise manner possible. What darkness would be spread over geometrical demonstrations, if wherever the word _circle_ is used, the definition of a circle were inserted instead of it. In mathematics and its applications, where the nature of the processes demands that the attention should be strongly concentrated, but does not require that it should be widely diffused, the importance of concentration also in the expressions has always been duly felt; and a mathematician no sooner finds that he shall often have occasion to speak of the same two things together, than he at once creates a term to express them whenever combined: just as, in his algebraical operations, he substitutes for (_a_m + _b_n) p/q, or for _a_/_b_ + _b_/_c_ + _c_/_d_ + etc., the single letter P, Q, or S; not solely to shorten his symbolical expressions, but to simplify the purely intellectual part of his operations, by enabling the mind to give its exclusive attention to the relation between the quantity S and the other quantities which enter into the equation, without being distracted by thinking unnecessarily of the parts of which S is itself composed.
But there is another reason, in addition to that of promoting perspicuity, for giving a brief and compact name to each of the more considerable results of abstraction which are obtained in the course of our intellectual phenomena. By naming them, we fix our attention upon them; we keep them more constantly before the mind. The names are remembered, and being remembered, suggest their definition; while if instead of specific and characteristic names, the meaning had been expressed by putting together a number of other names, that particular combination of words already in common use for other purposes would have had nothing to make itself remembered by. If we want to render a particular combination of ideas permanent in the mind, there is nothing which clinches it like a name specially devoted to express it. If mathematicians had been obliged to speak of "that to which a quantity, in increasing or diminishing, is always approaching nearer, so that the difference becomes less than any assignable quantity, but to which it never becomes exactly equal," instead of expressing all this by the simple phrase, "the limit of a quantity," we should probably have long remained without most of the important truths which have been discovered by means of the relation between quantities of various kinds and their limits. If instead of speaking of _momentum_, it had been necessary to say, "the product of the number of units of velocity in the velocity by the number of units of mass in the mass," many of the dynamical truths now apprehended by means of this complex idea would probably have escaped notice, for want of recalling the idea itself with sufficient readiness and familiarity. And on subjects less remote from the topics of popular discussion, whoever wishes to draw attention to some new or unfamiliar distinction among things, will find no way so sure as to invent or select suitable names for the express purpose of marking it.