40 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



in common by them all, their general resemblance depends. 

 When this is the case, people use the name without any re- 

 cognised connotation, that is, without any precise meaning ; 

 they talk, and consequently think, vaguely, and remain con- 

 tented to attach only the same degree of significance to their 

 own words, which a child three years old attaches to the words 

 brother and sister. The child at least is seldom puzzled by 

 the starting up of new individuals, on whom he is ignorant 

 whether or not to confer the title ; because there is usually an 

 authority close at hand competent to solve all doubts. But a 

 similar resource does not exist in the generality of cases ; and 

 new objects are continually presenting themselves to men, 

 women, and children, which they are called upon to class pro- 

 prio motu. They, accordingly, do this on no other principle 

 than that of superficial similarity, giving to each new object 

 the name of that familiar object, the idea of which it most 

 readily recalls, or which, on a cursory inspection, it seems to 

 them most to resemble : as an unknown substance found in 

 the ground will be called, according to its texture, earth, sand, 

 or a stone. In this manner, names creep on from subject to 

 subject, until all traces of a common meaning sometimes dis- 

 appear, and the word comes to denote a number of things not 

 only independently of any common attribute, but which have 

 actually no attribute in common ; or none but what is shared 

 by other things to which the name is capriciously refused. 

 Even scientific writers have aided in this perversion of general 

 language from its purpose ; sometimes because, like the vulgar, 

 they knew no better ; and sometimes in deference to that 

 aversion to admit new words, which induces mankind, on all 

 subjects not considered technical, to attempt to make the 

 original stock of names serve with but little augmentation to 

 express a constantly increasing number of objects and distinc- 

 tions, and, consequently, to express them in a manner pro- 

 gressively more and more imperfect. 



To what a degree this loose mode of classing and denomi- 

 nating objects has rendered the vocabulary of mental and moral 

 philosophy unfit for the purposes of accurate thinking, is best 

 known to whoever has most meditated on the present condi- 



