REQUISITES OF LANGUAGE. 229 



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 observa 

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

 the passing time. This function of language is so often over 

 looked 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 ten 

 dency 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 



