REQUISITES OF LANGUAGE. 225 



appellation will arise between A and E, although the two 

 objects may, in their nature and properties, be so widely distant 

 from each other, that no stretch of imagination can conceive 

 how the thoughts were led from the former to the latter. The 

 transitions, nevertheless, may have been all so easy and gra- 

 dual, that, were they successfully detected by the fortunate 

 ingenuity of a theorist, we should instantly recognise, not 

 only the verisimilitude, but the truth of the conjecture : in 

 the same way as we admit, with the confidence of intuitive 

 conviction, the certainty of the well-known etymological pro- 

 cess which connects the Latin preposition e or ex with the 

 English substantive stranger, the moment that the inter- 

 mediate links of the chain are submitted to our exami- 

 nation."* 



The applications which a word acquires by this gradual 

 extension of it from one set of objects to another, Stewart, 

 adopting an expression from Mr. Payne Knight, calls its 

 transitive applications ; and after briefly illustrating such of 

 them as are the result of local or casual associations, he pro- 

 ceeds as follows :f 



" But although by far the greater part of the transitive or 

 derivative applications of words depend on casual and unac- 

 countable caprices of the feelings or the fancy, there are 

 certain cases in which they open a very interesting field of 

 philosophical speculation. Such are those, in which an analo- 

 gous transference of the corresponding term may be remarked 

 universally, or very generally, in other languages ; and in 

 which, of course, the uniformity of the result must be ascribed 

 to the essential principles of the human frame. Even in such 

 cases, however, it will by no means be always found, on 



* "'E, ex, extra, extraneus, Stranger, stranger." 



Another etymological example sometimes cited is the derivation of the 

 English uncle from the Latin avus. It is scarcely possible for two words to 

 bear fewer outward marks of relationship, yet there is but one step between 

 them ; avus t avunculus, uncle. 



So pilgrim, from ager : per agrum, peragrinus, peregrinus, pellegrino, 

 pilgrim. 



t P. 226-7. 



VOL. II. 15 



