DEFINITION. 171 



obvious, and therefore considerable ; and, in the next place, 

 that it is a resemblance which has struck great numbers of 

 persons during a series of years and ages. Even when a name, 

 by successive extensions, has come to be applied to things 

 among which there does not exist this gross resemblance com- 

 mon to them all, still at every step in its progress we shall 

 find such a resemblance. And these transitions of the mean- 

 ing of words are often an index to real connexions between 

 the things denoted by them, which might otherwise escape 

 the notice of thinkers ; of those at least who, from using a 

 different language, or from any difference in their habitual 

 associations, have fixed their attention in preference on some 

 other aspect of the things. The history of philosophy abounds 

 in examples of such oversights, committed for want of per- 

 ceiving the hidden link that connected together the seemingly 

 disparate meanings of some ambiguous word.* 



Whenever the inquiry into the definition of the name of 

 any real object consists of anything else than a mere comparison 

 of authorities, we tacitly assume that a meaning must be found 

 for the name, compatible with its continuing to denote, if pos- 

 sible all, but at any rate the greater or the more important 

 part, of the things of which it is commonly predicated. The 

 inquiry, therefore, into the definition, is an inquiry into the 

 resemblances and differences among those things : whether 

 there be any resemblance running through them all ; if not, 

 through what portion of them such a general resemblance can 



* "Few people" (I have said in another place) " have reflected how great 

 a knowledge of Things is required to enable a man to affirm that any given 

 argument turns wholly upon words. There is, perhaps, not one of the leading 

 terms of philosophy which is not used in almost innumerable shades of meaning, 

 to express ideas more or less widely different from one another. Between two 

 of these ideas a sagacious and penetrating mind will discern, as it were intui- 

 tively, an unobvious link of connexion, upon which, though perhaps unable to 

 give a logical account of it, he will found a perfectly valid argument, which his 

 critic, not having so keen an insight into the Things, will mistake for a fallacy 

 turning on the double meaning of a term. And the greater the genius of him 

 who thus safely leaps over the chasm, the greater will probably be the crowing 

 and vain- glory of the mere logician, who, hobbling after him, evinces his own 

 superior wisdom by pausing on its brink, and giving up as desperate his proper 

 business of bridging it over." 



