240 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



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 significa 

 tion 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-move 

 ments, 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 Speciali 

 zation, by which other, or even these same words, are con 

 tinually 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 con 

 notation 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 



