226 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



examination, that the various applications of the same term 

 have arisen from any common quality or qualities in the objects 

 to which they relate. In the greater number of instances, 

 they may be traced to some natural and universal associations 

 of ideas, founded in the common faculties, common organs, 



and common condition of the human race According 



to the different degrees of intimacy and strength in the asso- 

 ciations on which the transitions of language are founded, very 

 different effects may be expected to arise. Where the associa- 

 tion is slight and casual, the several meanings will remain 

 distinct from each other, and will often, in process of time, 

 assume the appearance of capricious varieties in the use of the 

 same arbitrary sign. Where the association is so natural and 

 habitual as to become virtually indissoluble, the transitive mean- 

 ings will coalesce in one complex conception ; and every new 

 transition will become a more comprehensive generalization of 

 the term in question." 



I solicit particular attention to the law of mind expressed 

 in the last sentence, and which is the source of the per- 

 plexity so often experienced in detecting these transitions of 

 meaning. Ignorance of that law is the shoal on which some 

 of the most powerful intellects which have adorned the 

 human race have been stranded. The inquiries of Plato 

 into the definitions of some of the most general terms of 

 moral speculation are characterized by Bacon as a far nearer 

 approach to a true inductive method than is elsewhere to 

 be found among the ancients, and are, indeed, almost 

 perfect examples of the preparatory process of comparison and 

 abstraction : but, from being unaware of the law just men- 

 tioned, he often wasted the powers of this great logical 

 instrument on inquiries in which it could realize no result, 

 since the phenomena, whose common properties he so elabo- 

 rately endeavoured to detect, had not really any common 

 properties. Bacon himself fell into the same error in his 

 speculations on the nature of heat, in which he evidently 

 confounded under the name hot, classes of phenomena which 

 had no property in common. Stewart certainly overstates 

 the matter when he speaks of "a prejudice which has de- 



