NAMES. 39 



a newly-discovered race to make us refuse them the name of 

 man. Bationality, also, being a quality which admits of de 

 grees, it has never been settled what is the lowest degree of 

 that quality which would entitle any creature to be con 

 sidered a human being. In all such cases, the meaning of the 

 general name is so far unsettled and vague ; mankind have not 

 come to any positive agreement about the matter. When we 

 come to treat of Classification, we shall have occasion to show 

 under what conditions this vagueness may exist without 

 practical inconvenience ; and cases will appear in which the 

 ends of language are better promoted by it than by complete 

 precision ; in order that, in natural history for instance, indi 

 viduals or species of no very marked character may be ranged 

 with those more strongly characterized individuals or species 

 to which, in all their properties taken together, they bear the 

 nearest resemblance. 



But this partial uncertainty in the connotation of names 

 can only be free from mischief when guarded by strict precau 

 tions. One of the chief sources, indeed, of lax habits of thought, 

 is the custom of using connotative terms without a distinctly 

 ascertained connotation, and with no more precise notion of 

 their meaning than can be loosely collected from observing 

 what objects they are used to denote. It is in this manner that 

 we all acquire, and inevitably so, our first knowledge of our 

 vernacular language. A child learns the meaning of the 

 words man, or white, by hearing them applied to a variety of 

 individual objects, and finding out, by a process of generali 

 zation and analysis which he could not himself describe, 

 what those different objects have in common. In the case of 

 these two words the process is so easy as to require no as 

 sistance from culture; the objects called human beings, and 

 the objects called white, differing from all others by qualities 

 of a peculiarly definite and obvious character. But in many 

 other cases, objects bear a general resemblance to one another, 

 which leads to their being familiarly classed together under a 

 common name, while, without more analytic habits than the 

 generality of mankind possess, it is not immediately apparent 

 what are the particular attributes, upon the possession of which 



